Content warning: This section of the guide discusses suicide.

“You might think him a myth, a cartoon from a New Year’s card—ancient, haggard, clutching an hourglass, older than anyone on the planet. But Father Time is real.”

As a fable, the novel begins by foregrounding the narrative importance of the mythical figure Father Time and explaining his connection with contemporary characters. The narrative will intertwine the mythological world with a contemporary, realistic fictional world.

“This is a story about the meaning of time and it begins long ago, at the dawn of man’s history, with a barefoot boy running up a hillside. Ahead of him is a barefoot girl. He is trying to catch her. This is often the way it is between girls and boys. For these two, it is the way it will always be.”

The introduction of Dor and Alli is framed as both specific and universal. Here they exist as unique characters in a specific historical moment, but they will also stand for mythological characters who span narrative time, juxtaposing the brevity of human mortality with the immortality of myth.

“Try to imagine a life without timekeeping. You probably can’t. You know the month, the year, the day of the week. There is a clock on your wall or the dashboard of your car. You have a schedule, a calendar, a time for dinner or a movie.”

The narrator switches between narrating the lives of the characters and addressing the reader as “you,” explicitly connecting the themes of the novel, such as timekeeping, with the lived experience of his readers.