This novel is a reminder of what the late David Foster Wallace once said: "Every love story is a ghost story." That's truly the case for young Marie whose father died before his time, leaving her to wonder about death for a life time, even remembering how her ability to grieve and mourn has developed through time. Even though she lived 66 years after the death of her father, his presence is still there in her mind, and she still consults those difficult memories late into her life. This is the center of the novel's meaning, the meditation on death itself, and this lends a surreal, ghostly quality to the otherwise ordinary and realistic life of Marie.
The narrative is not full of interesting or clever story techniques. The characters are individuals, but they aren't extraordinary, and for the most part, Marie's thoughts are perceptive, but they aren't genius-level. And yet, the novel demonstrates control, letting the "devil be in the details," so to speak. Notice how the burned bread from her childhood makes a surprise appearance so many years later—and yet the smell makes her feel melancholic and guilty, because her last memories before the death of her father included her forgetting her mother's bread in the oven. For years, it seems she has been living with a sense of guilt about her father's death, like maybe she didn't do something right—but death is death. It's not a respecter of who burns what bread. It isn't until she realizes this later in life though, that she's able to sort through these things.
Moments like this are stuffed into the novel for exactly the same effect—to draw attention to the fact that although Marie's life has played out, the novel is actually a representation of the growth and change of her perspective throughout life. Marie is an excellent witness for the meaning of human life, because her adolescence was inciting by the sudden death of her own father. This creates a character who is concerned with death as consistently as humans think of their parents—so all the time. Her perspective is melancholic but resilient.
