Surfacing Characters

Well, the fact that the narrator never gets a name is our first clue that she (and what she's about) is going to be a bit hard to pin down. She seems to kind of live within her own head, not really...

Into every life, a little "David" (or someone like him) must fall. You might know the type already: a kind-of-jerky guy who passes off his ridiculous behavior (and, often, avoidance of steady work)...

She's a friend to the narrator and David's wife. At first, the narrator seems to think that Anna's a super-good friend (her best one, in fact) and has a great marriage, but the shine is off both th...

Joe is the narrator's boyfriend. When we first meet him, he seems a bit impatient and not necessarily super-interested in or aware of his girlfriend's emotional state. For example, when the narrato...

This is the unnamed woman who laughs at the narrator's French and makes the narrator feel self-conscious. When the narrator tries to order a hamburger using her school French, the woman makes fun o...

Paul is an old family friend who seems to have been particularly fond of, and friendly with, the narrator's father. He was the one who noticed the father was missing and wrote to the narrator to te...

We never get her actual name, but she's Paul's wife. She used to try to be friendly with the narrator's mother because their husbands were friends; however, because she doesn't speak a lot of Engli...

He owns the Blue Moon cabins and runs people down the lake in his boat (for a price). It is within this latter role that he interacts with the narrator, David, and Anna. David describes him as "A g...

He's an American man who's also traveling in the same region of Quebec where the narrator grew up. He asks the narrator if she'd like to sell her cabin to him; he wants to use it as a retreat for h...

"The Americans" are a couple of men traveling in the same region as the narrator and her friends. Although the narrator assumes they are Americans, she turns out to be wrong; they are actually Cana...