Latimer is the first-person narrator of "The Lifted Veil," as well as the main character. The story begins, as he informs the reader, exactly one month before his death. "Before that time comes," he explains, "I wish to use my last hours of ease and strength in telling the strange story of my experience." The story thus comes as the confession of a dying man who entrusts his lifelong secrets to the reader's sympathy. "I have never fully unbosomed myself to any human being," he says.

Through a flashback structure, Latimer tells his "strange story," beginning with childhood, when he first discovered that he had what he refers to as "superadded consciousness." A sickly, unscholarly and dreamy child, Latimer is dominated by his father's wish to expose him to all of the subjects he hates most: math, science, etc. At the age of 19, recovering from a...