Faith

Faith is one of Paley's characters who recurs numerous times over the course of the collection. She is the first person narrator of both the stories in "Two Short Sad Stories from a Long and Happy": "The Used-Boy Raisers" and "A Subject of Childhood." She also narrates the stories, "Faith in a Tree," "A Conversation with My Father," "The Long-Distance Runner," "Dreamer in a Dead Language," "Friends," and "Listening." In both "Faith in the Afternoon" and "The Expensive Moment," the third person narration is limited to Faith's perspective. Faith's character also reappears in both the forms of central and peripheral figures in several others of the stories as well.

Though Paley never explicitly links each iteration of Faith's character, whenever she returns to the page, the reader is able to notice similarities between these iterations. For example, in almost all of the stories where she appears, Faith is...