[2][3] The narrator himself suffers from a slight form of depression triggered by his recent divorce, childless state, and subsequent feeling of loneliness but still finds satisfaction in attempting to cure his patients of the complaints he occasionally recognizes in himself.

What is more, when the novel opens she is being harassed by a female journalist who states her intention to publicize hitherto unknown facts about Inga's deceased husband, a cult author and filmmaker, and who demands that she be co-operative without telling her what exactly she is aiming at or planning to do.

Inga's 18-year-old daughter Sonia suffers from posttraumatic stress disorder, having witnessed, from the windows of her Manhattan school, the September 11, 2001 attacks and the collapse of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Finally, the real stalker in the novel, a photographer and installation artist called Jeffrey Lane, displays various signs of compulsive behaviour, for example the urge to document virtually everything in his life by taking photos.

Erik and Inga succeed in tracking down the mysterious — and now dying — Lisa, and it turns out that all those years ago a young Lars Davidsen helped her bury her illegitimate, stillborn child, in all secrecy, somewhere on his family's farm.

Bernard Burton proves instrumental in procuring the letters without succumbing to the temptation to actually read them, in a chivalric act in which he dresses up as a frightful bag lady in order not to reveal his identity, a scene which also provides some comic relief.

[4] Ron Charles calls it "a radically postmodern novel that wears its po-mo credentials with unusual grace; even at its strangest moments, it never radiates the chilly alienation that marks, say, the work of Hustvedt's husband, Paul Auster.