Valeria Luisell’s novel, “Faces in the Crowd,” was intricately written from the perspective of two different narrators originating from different cities and periods. The author didn’t introduce nor warn the readers of the back-and-fourth narration occurring throughout the story, so I was very confused about the events transpiring until more than halfway through the book. Even after the realization that there were two points of view, I was confused about the man’s identity and thought that the male perspective came from the female protagonist’s husband instead of Gilberto Owens. The lecture confirmed the identity of the male narrator and suggested that perhaps it was actually the female protagonist writing from Owen’s perspective. That was intriguing because I myself thought that it was a completely different narrator. The novel was uniquely structured, it was deliberately fragmented and told in bits and pieces, resembling the unpredictableness of resurfacing memories and the disruption of family and work in the female protagonist’s life. Not only were there different narrations, but the storyline jumped between different times in their lives as well, which increased the difficulty of the reading because I needed to lock in and puzzle together the narrative. 

The woman lived with her husband but frequently reminisced on her life before her kids and family obligations. Her narration emits a sort of detached feeling like she regards herself from an external viewpoint. For instance, she never names her family members, she just refers to them as “son”, “the baby”, or “my husband”. It’s this detachment that makes me consider that the female protagonist possibly lost her sense of identity (a recurring theme in this course, like in Agostino and Agualusa) due to the responsibilities and commitments that come with marriage and motherhood. She introduces and revisits many characters from her premarriage days, merging the line between past and present. This novel was like reading her diary, but it’s difficult to interpret how much of the story was her own as she told her husband “It’s all fiction…” (pg. 57) when he snuck glances at her writing.

A very fascinating point in the story is when Gilberto Owens begins to take note of a “woman with the dark face and shadows under her eyes (pg. 43)” on the trains. Owen’s description of her “red coat” (pg. 43) made me recognize the woman’s identity, which revealed that he shockingly saw glimpses of the female protagonist. It was kind of like the two characters are interconnected through different realities. But if it had always been the female protagonist narrating, then wouldn’t this impossible event that defies the bounds of time and reality be a figment of her imagination due to her fascination with Owens? Overall, this was a difficult novel to navigate and interpret, I struggled to place characters and timezones and figure out the different narrations.   

Discussion Question(s)

What reason do you think the female protagonist chose not to include the names of herself and her family in her writing? What is your interpretation of the narration(s)?