The narrator of The Last Song of Sirit Byar is Mircha Del, who is about forty-seven years old. She is a rough-talking, cynical woman given to remarks such as, "Never bet on anything except human stupidity."

Her descriptions of herself are harsh: "Just big and ugly, the same as always," and, "I have the face I want, a dirty, mean wild animal's face that makes people leave me alone." In spite of her blunt speech, the story makes plain that she has led an active, robust life, and that even thirty years after his death she can appreciate the exceptional talent of Sirit Byar. "And all he was really, was a shaggy, rough-voiced old man—fifty anyway, surely—who sang dirty songs and called me 'big girl.' In a way, that's all he was," Mircha Del asserts. She describes the man...