N

N is the novel's unreliable first-person narrator. N provides very little information about himself explicitly, so the reader must piece together his personal information and backstory from vague comments and clues as the novel progresses. He is a single man in his 40s who feels a great deal of discomfort in the presence of other people. He works at a university in California (which seems to be modeled after Stanford University) at a job his father, the former president of the university, secured for him when he was expelled from medical school for cheating. It is unclear what he does, but he is offended when a colleague refers to him as a "glorified secretary" (111). Through flashbacks, it is eventually revealed that N attempted suicide while he was living in Ottawa attending medical school and that he was having an affair with a married man at the time. There...