No Two Persons: A Novel

The longer Theo is out in the world, the more lives the novel touches. In the first two chapters of Part 3, Theo reaches the characters Miranda and Tyler. Miranda lives in Washington State and works as a visual artist. Tyler lives in Florida, where he has devoted his life to swimming and diving. In spite of their differences, both Miranda and Tyler discover Theo when they are in need, illustrating the power of Books as Escape and Deliverance. Like Alice, Lara, and Rowan (introduced in Part 1), Miranda and Tyler are solitary individuals, their lives defined by loneliness and longing. Having begun her career with the hope of becoming a literary agent, Lara has had to remake herself as a stay-at-home mom. Tyler is adjusting to his new circumstances after his diving injury. Both characters are at transition points when the narrator introduces them in Chapters 1 and 2 of Part 3. Reading Theo effectively guides them over their thresholds from one chapter of life into the next. The book helps them to reconcile their fraught pasts with their unexpected circumstances in the present.

In Part 3, Chapter 1, Theo comes to life through Miranda’s artwork. The narrator explains that Miranda has always “loved the art that lay in the overlap, the mixing of metaphors and genres” (91). The work she creates in Chapter 1 repurposes the pages of the book itself as components of the artwork—actively interpreting Alice’s work by transposing it into a new form. For the majority of her career, Miranda has made three-dimensional projects out of found objects. She begins her new piece in anticipation of her community’s upcoming craft fair. In the same way that writing Theo helps Alice express herself, making the new sculpture allows Miranda to convey the ineffable facets of her internal experience. Just as Alice uses Literature as Pathway to Healing, Miranda’s work as an artist helps her to heal from her own painful memories.

Miranda receives Theo from her mother, from whom she is partially estranged. She keeps her mother at arm’s length and has little interest in reading the novel at first, but in the end, her mother’s gift provides literal material for her sculpture. In this way, the book forges an unexpected connection between Miranda and her mother. The image of the completed, winged sculpture also foreshadows the coming connection between Alice and Miranda in the novel’s final chapter. Just as Alice’s book helps Miranda finish her sculpture, Miranda’s sculpture will later inspire Alice’s next story idea. Therefore, Miranda’s storyline and work are central to the theme of Story as a Form of Connection.

In Tyler’s storyline, Theo grants Tyler’s character a new way of seeing—shedding light on Books as Escape and Deliverance. At the start of Chapter 2, Tyler has just experienced a sequence of losses. A stroke while diving has forced him to give up the water: the one realm from which he derives a sense of belonging. The resulting depression has cost him his girlfriend, Saylor. In the narrative present, Tyler is alone and grieving. When he finds Saylor’s copy of Theo, he is in need of answers and comfort. Throughout his life, Tyler has relied on swimming and diving to escape difficult circumstances. To Tyler, delving into watery depths feels “wide as forgiveness or hell, depending. Dark, in any case. You could get lost” (127). Tyler welcomes the escape the water offers him because it eases his emotional unrest. However, because he can no longer dive in the narrative present, he loses himself in Theo instead. The book feels familiar: “[I]t didn’t make any sense, but it was true—like swimming. His body calmed. He could feel the story, opening inside him” (141). For Miranda, Alice’s novel takes the form of wings. For Tyler, Alice’s novel assumes the form and cleansing qualities of water. The book delivers Tyler from his present circumstances. Furthermore, Theo’s story renews and resurrects Tyler in the way water once did.

Miranda’s and Tyler’s storylines exemplify the transformative power of story. Though they do not experience or interpret the novel in the same way—indeed, Miranda doesn’t even read Theo—Alice’s novel assumes new forms in both Miranda’s and Tyler’s lives. Alice reaches into Miranda’s and Tyler’s narrative worlds via Theo, influencing their characters. As an author, Alice has influence and reach that even she isn’t aware of. Her book was born out of her own personal need. Its cathartic powers live beyond her and transform Miranda’s and Tyler’s points of view in turn.