Memory and the Past

Both of the first-person narrators’ attempts to understand themselves in the present instigate the novel’s explorations of memory and the past. In the narrative present of Joe’s storyline, for example, Joe is 56 years old and dying from cancer. Since he is consigned to his bed, he spends the majority of his time drifting into remembrance and reflection. His positioning and circumstances therefore catalyze the narrative shifts between past and present. Throughout Joe’s chapters of the novel, Joe revisits buried instances from his former life in an attempt to reconcile himself with who he has been and to make peace with the life he has lived. The more he returns to such memories, however, the more unstable and unreliable they appear. In Chapter 1, while trying to recall the “day Ruthie went missing,” he remarks, “It’s funny what you remember when...