No Two Persons: A Novel

Parts 1 and 2 introduce the first three primary characters: Alice Wein, Lara, and Rowan. Although Alice, Lara, and Rowan live in different states and do not know one another, they are connected by one story: Alice’s novel, Theo. By opening with Alice’s story, the text foregrounds the thematic and narrative significance of her novel. Alice’s introduction to writing allows her to peek behind the curtain, seeing the act of storytelling from a new perspective—that of the magician rather than the audience, to use her analogy. As a novel within the novel, Theo allows Bauermeister to explore this relationship between writer and reader. Alice relates to the text as its author, while the other characters relate to it as readers—receivers and interpreters of the illusion that she has created. For Alice, part of the process of becoming a writer is realizing that she does not have full control over, or even full knowledge of, her work’s meaning. In Chapter 1, she realizes that although she imagined and wrote Theo, she “hadn’t thought, hadn’t wanted to think, that there might be a yet more complicated way to see. Another side, or two, or ten” (28). The reference to 10 sides of Theo’s story is a meta-narrative reference to the 10 characters’ stories that follow, as each character derives significance from Alice’s novel in their own unique way. This passage thus indicates the unifying and connective force that Theo will have in the subsequent chapters.

The novel within a novel is a literary device by which Bauermeister also introduces the themes of Story as a Form of Connection, Books as Escape and Deliverance, and Literature as a Pathway to Healing. Indeed, Alice is the first character who finds solace and comfort in Theo’s story. After Alice’s brother, Peter, dies of an overdose, Alice struggles to maintain her emotional and mental stability. She has always loved reading stories and thus manufactures her own escape by writing Theo. “Sometimes what she wrote felt more real than truth. But maybe that’s what writing was,” the narrator posits in Part 1, Chapter 1, “a way to get to the bedrock, the oxygen. To search out the possible” (26). Alice doesn’t pen her first novel as a hobby. The act of writing is a form of catharsis. Theo’s story is fictional. However, creating this narrative world on the page gives Alice perspective on her life and loss.

In Lara’s and Rowan’s chapters, Theo goes on to change the lives of other readers. Like Alice, both Lara and Rowan are familiar with loneliness, disappointment, and entrapment. Therefore, when they discover Theo, the novel offers each of them a way to escape their difficult circumstances. For Lara, Alice’s novel delivers her from the monotony and restrictions of motherhood. In Chapter 2, Lara derives comfort and affirmation from the novel. As soon as she reads the first sentence, she feels an enveloping presence telling her, “You’re not crazy” (49). Theo makes her feel that Alice is writing directly to her and loosens “the tightness inside her” (49). She feels understood and validated at a moment when the demands of new motherhood have left her feeling isolated and ignored. The novel offers her a new realm to discover.

Alice’s novel similarly transforms Rowan’s perception of reality. When he begins recording Theo, Rowan is a seasoned audiobook narrator. However, recording Alice’s narrative presents Rowan with a new challenge. His unexpected emotional attachment to Theo’s story makes him more invested in the recording process. Alice’s novel also inspires Rowan’s questions about himself, his life, his past, and his social context. In Theo, Rowan feels there is “a piece of glass” between all of the characters, as if they are separated by a “distance they couldn’t overcome” (73). The novel’s form and structure complicate Rowan’s recording work while changing how he sees his hermetic lifestyle in the present. Indeed, the narrator’s descriptions of Theo in the aforementioned quotation also apply to Bauermeister’s novel No Two Persons. The structure and form, story, and plotlines of No Two Persons mirror those of Theo. These meta-connections between the two novels widen Bauermeister’s thematic explorations. In the same way that No Two Persons connects a diverse network of characters, so too does Theo.

In these ways, Alice’s novel is resurrected and reincarnated by each character who reads it. Alice is initially afraid of letting Theo go when she submits her manuscript to Madeline Armstrong. However, she doesn’t know that other people like her need Theo’s story as much as she does. Alice doesn’t have access to Lara’s or Rowan’s experiences with Theo. However, her book still acts as a form of connection, deliverance, and healing between them. When Alice sends Theo out into the world, she is allowing everyone who finds the novel to infuse it with new meaning.