The Unnamed Narrator

The unnamed narrator is the first-person narrator of Nunez’s novel. Only at the novel’s very end does the reader discover that this unnamed narrator is, in fact, a fictional creation of another character, who uses the unnamed narrator as an autobiographical reproduction of her own life. For most of the novel, however, the reader assumes that the narrator is a real person. The unnamed narrator suffers profoundly due to her friend’s recent suicide. The unnamed narrator inherits her friend’s dog, Apollo, and throughout the novel cultivates a relationship with Apollo, which helps soothe her grief.

The unnamed narrator is a writer and a teacher, who often speculates on the nature and purpose of art. The narrator met “you,” in fact, because “you” was her writing teacher when she was still a student. The narrator ruminates on her experience as a writing teacher...