The novel begins on a note of grief. Fresh from the loss of their father, Ivan and Peter Koubek are reckoning with their complicated relationships to their parents and to one another. Ivan’s arc in particular builds towards the revelation that he is grappling with his father’s exit from material time. This places a burden on him to preserve his father’s existence through memory—an effort that portrays a material world that is meaningful, but always on the brink of collapse. Margaret reminds Ivan that it is impossible to erase someone’s existence by forgetting them, but this is difficult for Ivan to accept in the context of the life he is only still beginning to live.

Ivan’s dilemma resonates with Peter’s nostalgia for a time long gone. Peter’s relationship with Sylvia represents an inability to move on from his idyllic college days. To relieve the cynicism and lifelessness he feels in his job as a lawyer, Peter retreats to Sylvia’s classroom, hoping to return to the world of ideas and culture that inspired him at the start of his adult life. Sylvia mirrors Peter’s nostalgia. She, too, longs to be remembered the way she was before the accident that affected her health, abruptly ending a phase of time that she and Peter both long to return to.