No Two Persons: A Novel

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Parts 1-2

Part 3, Chapters 1-2

Part 3, Chapters 3-4

Part 3, Chapters 5-8

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Literary Devices

Structure

The novel’s unconventional narrative structure enacts Bauermeister’s central themes. No Two Persons is organized into three parts and 12 chapters. The chapters are titled with temporal, geographic, and vocational markers. Each chapter presents a new character’s storyline. The only exception to this rule is Part 2, Chapter 1. The titled chapters can be experienced as independent short stories. Indeed, the characters’ narratives are formally sequestered from one another. When Part 1, Chapter 1 ends, Alice’s story ends. When Part 1, Chapter 2 begins, Lara’s story begins. Therefore, each character has an independent life and plot line. The 10 characters live in different places and wrestle with different questions. By separating their narratives one from another on the page, Bauermeister structurally conveys the characters’ loneliness, longing, and disconnection. The narrative structure mirrors their physical solitude.

No Two Persons is the overarching container that connects the 10 characters’ disparate lives. Few of the characters meet or interact with one another. However, they are all connected via their participation in a communal story. They are also linked by Alice’s novel, Theo. Theo is one of the few images that recurs in every single chapter. The fictional novel breaks the rules of the narrative structure and thus transcends the characters’ insular realities.

Setting

The novel’s setting isn’t constant from beginning to end. Some chapters take place in Maine, while others are set in Washington State, British Columbia, Northern California, Northeastern California, Florida, or New York City. The setting shifts in accordance with each character’s storyline. These geographical shifts enact the author’s explorations concerning connection and disconnection and escape and deliverance. The characters often feel trapped by their insular circumstances and alienated from others. They frequently long to transcend their physical location. The novel’s shifting setting suggests that place is mutable. Indeed, Alice discovers “her own world, far from their house and their eastern Oregon town” by reading when she’s a child (6). Tyler finds new watery depths to explore by reading Theo after his diving accident. Theo also transports Rowan, Nola, and Juliet out of the present and into an alternate reality. Therefore, the characters are less restricted than they feel. Books, art, and stories help them escape their circumstances in the present and send them to new temporal and geographical locations.

Point of View

The novel’s third-person point of view forges subtextual connections between Bauermeister’s 10 disparate characters. Alice, Lara, Rowan, Miranda, Tyler, Nola, Kit, William, Juliet, and Madeline have contrasting circumstances and personalities. They live in different locations, hold different jobs, and dream of different futures. However, they are all connected by the third-person narrator. The narrator shifts from one character's life to another, granting the characters equal attention on the page. She depicts all of their stories with empathy and care. Therefore, Bauermeister uses this common third-person narrator to formally convey the interconnection of all human lives.

If Bauermeister had written each chapter from each character’s first-person point of view, the characters’ lives would appear irreconcilable. The third-person narration implies that connection, intimacy, and friendship are always possible.

In each chapter, the third-person narrator shifts into a new character’s consciousness. For example, in Part 1, Chapter 1, the narrator traces Alice’s story and describes the narrative world through Alice’s lens. The narrator doesn’t judge Alice’s perception. Rather, she depicts Alice’s circumstances the way Alice sees them. The same formal principle applies to Lara’s, Rowan’s, Miranda’s, Nola’s, Kit’s, William’s, Juliet’s, and Madeline’s chapters. In this way, Bauermeister exemplifies “a yet more complicated way to see. Another side, or two, or ten” (28). The narrative scope adds nuance to the theme of Story as a Form of Connection and Healing—though each character’s life is informed by Theo, the book means something different to each of them.

The narrator’s limited, free, indirect style complicates Bauermeister’s characters. The point of view exists “somewhere in the murky in-between, its focus tight on [the primary characters], but still always from the outside” (72). Therefore, the narration enacts the characters’ estrangement from themselves. Alice, Lara, Rowan, Miranda, Tyler, Nola, Kit, William, Juliet, and Madeline often feel “that complete empathy [is] impossible, while still […] yearning for it” (73). They long for connection yet struggle to foster intimacy. The point of view captures and conveys these complex experiences.