The Narrator

The protagonist of the novel is an unnamed girl or woman who also functions as the narrator, is the principle character in nearly every scene, and who claims to be the metafictional author of the novel. Many readers consider the novel to be highly autobiographical and therefore naturally equate the narrator to the book's author. Certainly, they share many biographical details. The narrator, born c. 1917, is an unnamed French girl living in Sadec in French Indochina with her mother and two older brothers. The narrator's father died several years previously and since that time, the mother has made several poor investments, which have drained away the family's residual wealth. Thus, the narrator is raised in relative poverty. Even so, she attends a prestigious school in nearby Saigon. The narrator's family is dysfunctional; her mother is a manic-depressive suffering from frequent and prolonged bouts of abject depression. The...