There are two main protagonists in this novel, Fanny and the “Narrator.” They were close childhood friends but then lost touch. He meets her again after he has grown up, developed a secure and stable self, and found his place in mainstream society. Reading played a big part in this process of entering ordinary everyday life. Thus, when the Narrator meets Fanny again, he “was startled. Fanny no longer bore any real resemblance to her childhood self.” (p. 63). Since reading had been so important to him in becoming an integrated self, he is perplexed by the fact that “in Fanny’s case, the more she read, the more she seemed to fall apart” (ibid.). It seemed that Fanny “had begun slowly breaking into a multitude of fragments that nothing held together any longer” (p. 52). Instead of Fanny having developed a stable identical “I” that would order and systematize her observations, her knowledge, her intake of information, she had an “I “that was actually made up of all kinds of words and voices, all kinds of thoughts and views, that were not the fruit of Fanny’s own personal reflections but a mishmash, so to speak, and sometimes even a substitute for her own … It was as if, in place of her own mind … it was as if at the point where all the currents come together and one’s own thoughts are formed there was a kind of hole. A black hole” (p. 20). As much as Fanny suffers from not being able to make the step into mainstream society, despite all the doctors she saw and medications she took, and despite all the effort put in by her friend, the Narrator, he suffers from his disappointment (alas! not a selfish disappointment) that he could not help her take this step. Though he suspects that he might, in fact, exacerbate her mental turmoil by his expectations and his reactions to her verbal and behavioral statements, he can nevertheless not stop being her friend, and that meant trying to help her. He did not have the option of just leaving her alone. “He prays to heaven that his influence was not too important. He had often thought that the best way to help Fanny perhaps might have been to abandon her to her fate so that she found her own path in life, but he was never able to do this. Was his own need of her that great? And, if so, why?” (p. 50). Nevertheless, their renewed, sometimes beautiful and hopeful, but often troubled, difficult, tormented friendship lasted for 20 years, until her death at age 43.

            Most of the novel is about the interactions between Fanny and the Narrator, the ways, or modus operandi, that two selves use that function within fundamentally different psychological parameters, and who cannot really understand how the other mentally operates and what her/his mental and emotional needs are, so that they can nevertheless be friends for such a long time. “Round and round they spun like this for as long as Fanny was alive – for twenty years, in fact, which is a long time for a dance of that kind” (p. 59). But even Fanny’s and the Narrator’s best effort could not prevent Fanny’s life to be cut short. Very late in the novel, on p. 107, Serre tells readers that the Narrator, in fact, had a deep and loving relationship with another woman that had existed for as long as he had his friendship with Fanny. “For all that he’s a Narrator, how could he have coped with Fanny’s madness, helping her along and loving her, without the presence of this other woman? How could he have kept going, doggedly facing down the unremitting spectacle of death on the march, without this cheerful, festive life to offset it?” Readers probably don’t have to take this remark as referring to a real woman. It is the only place in the book where she turns up, and Serre’s style suddenly becomes exaggerated. So, it is probably better to treat this as the Narrator’s mental construct that provides an ideal contrast to his real friendship with Fanny.

MHN

Nonthaburi, Thailand

9 March 2025