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

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Discussion Questions

Themes

Story as a Form of Connection

The novel’s 10 primary characters are connected by their common appreciation for stories. On their surface, Alice Wein, Lara, Rowan, Miranda, Tyler, Nola, Kit, William, Juliet, and Madeline Armstrong appear to be disparate, unrelated characters. They are unique individuals with distinct personalities, troubles, and histories. The narrative structure and form enact these distinctions. As Rowan observes of Alice’s characters in Theo, Bauermeister’s characters have “a piece of glass between them. A distance they couldn’t overcome” (73). The characters exist in separate spheres and are isolated and lonely. Their circumstances beget the same question Rowan asks after reading Theo: “Is it always like this? […] Can we never truly connect” (79)? However, the novel challenges this idea by connecting the characters via Alice’s novel, Theo. The novel emerges as an overt thread linking the characters to each other. In spite of their differences, all 10 characters encounter and resurrect the text in their minds. Theo’s story becomes embedded within each of their stories.

Alice is the most isolated character in the novel. She is innately reserved, and losing her brother compounds her reclusive tendencies. For Alice, Theo’s story becomes a balm, as the work of writing it helps her to process her own grief. In turn, Alice helps others with Theo’s story. She fears letting Theo go when she submits the manuscript, but doing so teaches her that “there might be a more complicated way to see. Another side, or two, or ten” (28). Lara, Rowan, Miranda, Tyler, Nola, Kit, William, Juliet, and Madeline experience the story differently. They each infuse it with their own meaning. No matter how they interpret Theo, the story lives inside of them and connects them to their peers, even if they never meet.

The overarching story of No Two Persons similarly enacts connections between Bauermeister’s 10 primary characters. No Two Persons is a symbol of the collective life story. Like Miranda’s sculpture, the novel reaches into a communal past. It presents an ongoing story that Bauermeister’s reader can “hold in her hands, solid and unmistakable—and then, through her imagination, the pieces [change] meaning, becoming hers, becoming her” (109). No Two Persons is a meta-narrative. The novel tells a story about a fictional book and the characters who write and read it. At the same time, the novel is a work of fiction. Therefore, it is commenting upon and describing its own inception, publication, distribution, and reach. Bauermeister nests one narrative inside of another over the course of the novel. In this way, she illustrates the interconnection between stories and lives.

Books as Escape and Deliverance

All of Bauermeister’s characters find comfort, solace, and clarity in books. Their lives are defined by distinct conflicts. Each has their own sensibilities, sorrows, and fears, but books have the power to save all of them from their troubles. For example, Alice discovers “her own world, far from their house and their eastern Oregon town” when she learns to read (6). Books transport her out of her insular life and into new realms. Books deliver her from grief and grant her hope after Peter’s death. Books also offer William comfort after his wife, Abigail’s, death. He escapes into Theo’s world while discovering a pathway to renewal. For Lara, books are a form of magic. She loves her work as a reader for Madeline Armstrong Literary: “[loves] the chemical change that [can] happen when a story [starts] to lift off a page” (41). Reading dissipates her troubles and questions. For Tyler, reading becomes a “moment of escape” after his diving accident (119). Books “help him see a whole story, teach him compassion again” (137). When he starts reading Saylor’s copy of Theo, the book becomes a new terrain for him to explore. Theo is a source of healing Tyler’s story, just as water was before his stroke: Like water, the book frees him and cleanses him.

Books and reading take on new meanings in Miranda’s, Nola’s, Kit’s, Juliet’s, and Madeline’s storylines. They do not experience or interact with books in the same way as the other characters. For example, Miranda sees books as material objects to use in her artwork. However, her copy of Theo delivers her from her anxiety by helping her finish her sculpture. For Nola, reading is a vice. She uses books to distract herself from her present. However, she discovers that books can also change her perspective. In this way, books deliver her from her insular way of seeing the world. Books catalyze her subtle internal changes. The same is true for Rowan. Reading and narrating books offers him perspective on his past and present.

Books are lifelines in Kit’s, Juliet’s, and Madeline’s narratives too. After Kit reads Theo, he wonders, “Maybe not consciously, but that was the beauty of books, wasn’t it? They took you places you didn’t know you needed to go” (211). Reading lets Kit escape his reality. It also teaches him how to change his life. For Juliet, reading Theo encourages her to invest in her relationships. The fictional novel’s ending is “a beginning more than an ending, and likely to be a complicated one—but that, the book told her, was okay” (270). Listening to the audiobook eases her anxiety on the plane. Finishing the book changes her outlook on the future. Madeline relates to books in a similar way. She has worked as a literary agent for over 50 years because she loves the “sudden clarity that [a] book would affect not just her, but others. Lots of others” (276). Her character is the hinge between the other characters. Her titles have reached Alice, Lara, Rowan, Miranda, Tyler, Nola, Kit, William, and Juliet, healing their pain while changing how they see themselves.

Literature as a Pathway to Healing

Bauermeister places Alice’s story at the forefront of the novel to center the power of writing. Alice’s relationship to writing bleeds into and informs the subsequent chapters’ storylines. Indeed, writing Theo heals Alice and everyone who reads the fictional novel. Therefore, Alice’s storyline must lead No Two Persons in order for her 2010 novel to impact the storylines that follow.

Writing has been a fixture in Alice’s life since childhood. Stories let her escape reality and transport her to new worlds. She sees writers as magicians and stories as magic. This is why she dreams of becoming a writer when she is a little girl. She tells her brother Peter: “I’m going to make my own worlds” (7). Peter insists, “You get the world they give you, Alice,” but Alice doesn’t give up (8). She develops her writing craft throughout her adolescence, eventually studying creative writing in college. After dropping out, she continues to write independently. Alice’s devotion to writing throughout her life conveys the artform’s transformative possibilities. “The trick for a writer,” as Professor Roberts tells Alice’s class, “is to take those eternal questions, those known bits and pieces, and put them together in a way that helps us see our world in a different light” (13). Alice accomplishes this feat when she writes Theo. The story lets Alice escape her sorrow after Peter’s death because Theo’s world is an imaginary realm. Furthermore, what Alices writes feels “more real than truth. But maybe that’s what writing was, in the end—a way to get to the bedrock, the oxygen. To search out the possible” (26). Therefore, writing saves Alice’s life. She isn’t writing Peter’s or her own story. However, writing Theo’s story clarifies her questions and eases her pain. Penning Theo’s story challenges her “to see things in people they might not see themselves” (28). The act of writing draws her out of her own troubles and into her characters’. Writing is an act of empathy, of questioning, and of discovering.

Alice’s writing heals numerous lives after Theo is published—just as writing the book is an act of healing for Alice, reading it is an act of healing for others. Professor Roberts tells Alice that a story begins “in the writer’s mind, and it grows and changes while it’s there. Changes the writer, too” (30). However, after the writer is finished, “the story isn’t done, because it goes on to live in the readers’ minds, in a way that’s particular to each of them” (31). Writing Theo mends Alice’s heart and helps her move forward. Reading it has a similar impact on Lara, Rowan, Miranda, Tyler, Nola, Kit, William, Juliet, and Madeline. These dynamics convey the lasting, transformative, and cathartic power of literature. The artform isn’t static or insular. It has reach and resonance.