Point of View

The novel is narrated in the past tense by a third-person omniscient narrator. Because the narrator is omniscient, they have access to the thoughts and feelings of both main characters, Gilbert and Yosa, but the vast majority of the novel is narrated from Gilbert's perspective only. The reader learns of Yosa's background, the reasons for his suicidal impulses, but where Yosa goes when he disappears in the train station at Sendai, and what happens to him after this separation from Gilbert remains a mystery.

Gilbert, on the other hand, the reader gets to know in great detail, as the narrator describes his frustration with his career (even providing minutia related to his academic work on the iconography of beards) and his misplaced anger with his wife, Mathilda. The narrator offers clues that Gilbert is actually angry with himself because of his perceived failures: “He'd always...