The Sequel

The opening chapters of Part 1 establish the primary conflicts and stakes of protagonist Anna Williams-Bonner’s story. The narrative is written from the third-person point of view, but this narrator is limited to Anna’s consciousness. Therefore, the narrator describes the narrative world according to how Anna sees and experiences it. Her internal feelings and thoughts thus dictate the narrative atmosphere, tone, and tension. Over the course of Chapters 1-8, the narrator’s voice mutates according to how Anna is feeling. In Chapter 1, for example, the narrator affects a confident, cavalier tone because Anna is basking in the success of her new book The Afterword:

First of all, it wasn’t even that hard. The way they went on, all those writers, so incessantly, so dramatically, they might have been going down the mines on all fours with a plastic spoon clenched between their teeth to loosen the diamonds, or wading in raw sewage to find the leak in the septic line, or running into burning buildings with forty-five pounds of equipment on their backs. But this degree of whining over the mere act of sitting down at a desk, or even reclining on a sofa, and […] typing? Not so hard. Not hard at all, actually (3).

The way in which the chapter begins captures Anna’s confidence and her ego at the novel’s start. In particular, the narrator’s use of figurative language, colloquial diction, and punctuation enacts Anna’s state of mind. Her husband Jake Bonner has recently died and Anna has been playing the part of the grieving widow. However, the narrator’s rendering of Anna’s headspace reveals that she is a dichotomous character. She carries herself in one way in public arenas while in fact harboring an alternate identity in private. Furthermore, Anna considers herself above others, particularly in the writing and publishing world and therefore feels capable and indomitable at the novel’s start.

Once Anna’s public persona is threatened by unforeseen conflicts, the narrator’s tone changes. Such conflicts include the readers at the book tour events sharing their stories with Anna, the woman confronting Anna about Jake’s failure to send her his books, and the sticky note about her late brother Evan Parker. With each of these unpredictable events and experiences, Anna’s confidence begins to falter. In turn, the narrator’s voice becomes less assured and declarative. For example, in the days leading up to the book tour, Anna still has the mindset she had at the writer’s residence. She believes that “If these idiots can do it, how fucking hard can it be?” (13). She maintains this outlook throughout her meetings with Matilda and Wendy and her interview with Rene, repeatedly telling herself that she has “never been a doubter, not when it came to herself, anyway” and that she isn’t “about to start now” (21). She speaks openly about her desire to “take some things that happened in [her] life and make them into somebody else’s story” (27), about Jake’s death and harassment, and about her grieving process. However, her resolve and boldness begins to dissipate throughout the subsequent book tour scenes. Her fans’ habit of “offering up [their] personal trauma, all varieties of loss but plenty of suicides” makes her feel physically tired (61). Then the sticky note unsettles her psychologically. In turn, the narrator’s language becomes more questioning and employs an increasing number of appositives to affect Anna’s growing insecurity and fear.

The novel is using these book tour events as narrative devices by which to challenge Anna’s character and to destabilize her world. The sticky note is also a device used to unleash Anna’s past. While her foray into the book tour world introduces thematic emoticons regarding The Ethics of Storytelling and The Tension Between Truth and Fiction, Anna’s encounter with the sticky note introduces the novel’s explorations of The Intersection of the Past and Present. Anna’s response to the note captures how shocked and upset she is to have her late brother suddenly resurface in her new life as Anna. In the hotel, she fights “an urge to grind it into the carpet or open the sliding glass door to the interior courtyard and drop it onto the walkway below” (65). These images imply that Anna wants to destroy all evidence of her past and her connection to it. She thought she had destroyed her former life and identity as Dianna Parker and wants to continue living as Anna, unhindered by her traumatic upbringing in Vermont with Evan, Rose, and her parents. However, the sticky note invades her new life as Anna and in turn induces a flashback on the page. The temporal shift into Anna’s past as Dianna in Chapter 8 provides insight into her complex character while augmenting the narrative tension and stakes. Furthermore, the disparities between Anna and Dianna further the novel’s explorations of The Tension Between Truth and Fiction. Anna has tried to cleanse her current life of her past life. She has done so by inventing a fictional identity and life for herself as Anna. Therefore, in burying her past she is also trying to bury the truth.