Identity

By writing the novel from three different first person points of view, the author considers the relativity of identity to each individual. While the wife, the husband, and the friend all possess distinct regards for one another and impressions of reality, each of the three characters is assertive about the way in which they see the world. They therefore each feel in control of themselves and therefore others’ impressions of them. However, what the reader garners from each of these points of view in tandem is that the characters’ identities are in fact amalgams of how they present themselves and how others perceive them. For example, while the wife asserts that “I am in control of who I am to [my husband] and he sees what I want him to see,” Temi feels that the wife is only “an apparition of the person she thought she...