Surfacing Narrator:

First Person (Central Narrator)/Unnamed Protagonist

The unnamed protagonist is the central narrator of the novel, so everything gets filtered through her perspective and memories. That deep embedded-ness in her mind ends up being a bit problematic in terms our efforts as readers to piece together the story's "reality," because we ultimately realize that her memories are often distorted or outright false.

Take, for example, when the narrator is gazing at Anna lolling around on the dock:

Except for the bikini and the colour of her hair she could be me at sixteen, sulking on the dock, resentful at being away from the city and the boyfriend I'd proved my normality by obtaining; I wore his ring, too big for any of my fingers, around my neck on a chain, like a crucifix or a military decoration. (6.3)

In that moment, we think we're getting deep insight into the narrator's sullen teenage years, but later we realize that there are some holes and distortions in her recall here. It turns out that her "boyfriend" was actually a married man, and they used the ring sometimes to make getting a hotel room together easier. So, not exactly the picture of teen "normality" she had initially painted, right?

Her most obvious and flagrant distortion, though, is her claim to having had a child. She honestly believes this to be true for about three quarters of the novel, until she suddenly realizes that she had actually had an abortion at the prodding of her married boyfriend (whom she had mistakenly remembered as being her ex-husband and father of her living child).

In short, the unnamed narrator isn't really the most reliable source we've ever come across. That said, her ability to acknowledge the holes in her memory suggests that she has evolved throughout the course of the novel; she is now willing to confront the past head-on—which is an important step in shaking off the passivity and "victim" status that it seems she embraced before she takes that dip in the lake.