Identity

The narrator struggles to define himself. Although the central character/narrator is approaching 50, the novel examines the question of identity that typically defines coming-of-age narratives in which adolescents must confront the complicated question of who they are. In many ways, however, Frank does not know who he is. When Frank describes his narrative approach to the life of Cuban patriot José Marti, that strategy reflects the strategy of the novel itself. “He’s trying to work out in his thoughts how everything in his life has gotten so completely fucked up, and inside his head he is talking to his wife and to his lover and to other people…fragments of narrative settling onto the page as if in wet cement” (11).

Frank’s problem, as he comes to see in his conversations with people from his past, is that he has lost any sense of who...