Summary

In the first section of “The Lost Year,” the author describes the main character’s struggle to keep track of a period of time. The character is never named and, for the purposes of this guide, is referred to merely as “The Narrator.” The narrator sometimes wakes to discover that he’s still asleep and dreaming. He often hears someone calling his name but can’t find the caller and there comes a time when he can‘t remember his own name. One day he realizes that he has called his own name and it’s then that the “lost year” begins. It’s in the moments before he falls asleep that he “sees and hears many things.”

In the second section of “The Lost Year,” the Narrator’s mother puts a glass of water under the boy’s bed each night...