The Guncle opens with Patrick recording a video testimonial to the recently dead Sara, but her kids struggle to come up with anything meaningful to say: Under the pressure of performing for the camera, their memories of their mother come off as simplistic and trite. The character of Sara is reconstructed after the fact, with different characters offering their own takes on who she was. Because Patrick is the novel’s protagonist, Rowley presents his portrait of Sara most dominantly—Patrick remembers Sara as a daring adventurer willing to break the rules, a friend who could point out his flaws without judgment. Nothing is held back in their relationship, in stark contrast to. Sara is the sister Patrick wishes he had—unlike his actual sister Clara—so when Sara became a wife and mother, Patrick distanced himself since “She wasn’t mine anymore” (236). This feeling of ownership translates into memories: When Sara dies, however, Patrick believes his memories of her are the only genuine ones, that his Sara is the real one. When he first takes in Sara’s kids, the domestic, maternal Sara is not the Sara he wants to remember.

Some research indicates that memory (or memorability, the reasons some memories remain while others fade) is linked to what we deem “high-priority information,” information that we consider important enough to store in our long-term memory (Resnick, Brian.