Point of View

All seven of the short stories collected in People from Bloomington are narrated from the first person point of view. Although these first person narrators are all distinct individuals, they possess a wealth of similarities. They all reside in the college town of Bloomington, Indiana. They all either rent rooms in the houses of elderly women or rent small units in large apartment complexes. The majority of these narrators live entirely by themselves. Therefore, each of the narrators’ lives is defined by isolation, alienation, and subsequent loneliness. Despite their similar character traits and circumstances and their shared Bloomington locale, none of the narrators explicitly come into contact with one another. In this way, the author presents seven distinct angles of life in Bloomington, an existence defined by both comfort and estrangement, banality and obsessive curiosity in the affairs of others.

All of the short stories...