The narrator is the novel’s protagonist. While he might not be wholly unreliable, his narrative is subjective, shaped by a confluence of personal traumas: the horrors of WWII, the loss of his mother, and his father’s bitterness. These experiences color his perceptions, often making him see in others the flaws he cannot recognize in himself. Before the novel, his disillusionment with US culture’s superficiality drives him to Europe and then, as the war disrupts his search for meaning, to South America in pursuit of a culture he believes is closer to his Latin American roots. The move to America after his mother’s death leaves him struggling with identity and belonging.

In New York, working as a composer for an advertising agency and married to Ruth, he battles loneliness and a sense of isolation, exacerbated by the commercial demands on his artistic talents. To escape boredom and loneliness, he drinks, socializes with avant-garde intellectuals, and starts an affair with Mouche, whom he dislikes and constantly criticizes for her lack of depth: “I began to ask myself whether her shrewd observations on the mysterious sensuality of windows of the Barberini Palace [.