No Two Persons: A Novel

Theo’s story changes how Nola and Kit perceive their own life stories. For Nola, Theo offers her a new way of thinking about her father’s death and her mother’s disappearance. For Kit, Theo grants him perspective on his work as a bookseller and his relationship with Annalise. Both stories illustrate the power of Books as Escape and Deliverance—delivering Nola from grief and confusion and Kit from entrapment in a relationship that forces him to erase core parts of his personality. Alice Wein’s fictional novel in turn forges a subtextual link between Nola and Kit: two more characters who are separated by time and space but brought together by Story as a Form of Connection.

In Nola’s chapter, “Northern California 2014, The Teenager,” Theo provides a resolution to the conflicts in Nola’s life. She is only a teenager, but her life has been defined by tragedy, sorrow, and loneliness. Not unlike Tyler, Nola learns to rely on books as a retreat from her fraught circumstances. Far from a simple distraction, however, books also offer Nola perspective on her life. “The story everybody [tells] about Nola, the version she [lets] them tell because it [holds] a drama that [is] an armor all its own” fundamentally abrades Nola’s private understanding of her life story (150). Nola’s rendition is saturated with sensory detail and with painful, emotional ramifications. Because she can’t blame her late father for dying in a car accident, Nola directed her anger at her mother, whose grief led her to abandon her daughter. This anger has festered inside Nola until she starts reading and discussing Theo for her English class. The fictional novel’s plot is not a mirror image of Nola’s story, but Theo’s complex parental relationships remind Nola of her own parental difficulties. “All those fictional lives she had opened herself to,” Nola realizes while reflecting upon Theo, “taking on their experiences, their emotions, like the good octopus she was—and the one story she had refused was her mother’s” (169). Therefore, by analyzing Theo’s story, Nola learns how to resee her own story. Through Alice’s fictional tale, Nola gains insight into her lived experience, showing the value of Literature as a Pathway to Healing.

In Kit’s chapter, “Maine 2016, The Bookseller,” Theo’s story disrupts Kit’s insular version of reality. In the narrative present, Kit is working as a bookseller and dating a woman named Annalise. Kit has allowed himself to fall into this romantic relationship because it feels neat, easy, and predictable. “It was,” the narrator explains, “[Annalise’s] precision that drew [Kit] in. Annalise was like cut glass, all her surfaces smooth and clean and clear, her eyes like thinking itself” (183-84). Because Kit’s life has always felt “far more ambiguous,” he became dependent on Annalise for a sense of order, certainty, and clarity (184). He deceived himself into believing that Annalise can resolve his internal unrest. He convinced himself that with Annalise, he can write a new story for himself. Over the course of this chapter, Kit discovers that Annalise is in fact compromising his true self. The relationship makes him lonelier than his former solitude. Much like Lara, Rowan, Miranda, Tyler, and Nola, Kit experiences these personal revelations by reading Alice’s novel, Theo. By the end of his chapter, Kit realizes that this is the best thing about books: “They [take] you places you didn’t know you needed to go” (211). Reading Theo changes how Kit regards his present life and thus transports him into his future life. The novel offers him a route out of his circumstances and into a new life. The book reconnects him with his former, truer self while delivering him from a stifling relationship.

For both Nola and Kit, Alice’s novel provides a route to healing and renewal. Nola and Kit are both outsiders. Nola is bullied and demeaned for her familial circumstances, her appearance, and her personality. Kit is looked down on for his job. Both characters try to conceal their authentic selves via synthetic means. They hide, lie, and retreat. Once they read Theo, they discover how to embrace who they are and what they have experienced. The novel gives them answers they hadn’t known how to articulate or had feared asking.