Main Characters
Additional Characters
Central Themes
Quotes
- Lena - Sensitive and spiritual 11-year-old girl who lives in a remote Romanian village called Zalischik. Lena encourages the villagers to deny any relationship with the known and start over from scratch. Destiny is unwritten. Jobs, husbands, a child, are reassigned. And for years, there is boundless hope. But reality continues to unfold alongside the illusory one, eventually overtaking it, and soon Lena, grown into a young mother-must flee her village, move from one world to the next, to find her husband and save her children, and propel them toward a real and hopeful future.
- The Stranger – The only survivor of a Nazi pogrom in her own village. She washes up on the river’s edge of Lena’s village. The villagers’ false sense of isolation from the world is halted.
- Igor – The only character who is captured , yet his imprisonment ends up ensuring his safety.
- Lena's Parents – Lena's parents are present in the beginning, but they put Lena up for adoption to ensure her safety. This was a common thing of parents during the Holocaust and family separation was a huge struggle.
- Regina- Lena's childhood friend that she ends up loosing relations with due to the changes the must endure.
- Adoption- Soon the stranger and Lena, a sensitive and spiritual eleven-year-old girl, jolt the villagers to start their world anew. Naively believing they can rewrite history, the community vows to build a new temple, designate new religious leaders, swap wives if necessary, and even give away their children in the name of rebirth. The consequences are spiritually arresting and identity-altering. Before long Lena becomes a victim of the new world she helped create, her previous identity forcibly shed in the name of communal rebirth.
- Migration –
- The Mysterious stranger migrates from her village that was destroyed to Lena's. She must learn how to adjust.
- Lena, grown into a young mother-must flee her village, move from one world to the next, to find her husband and save her children, and propel them toward a real and hopeful future.
- Storytelling – Storytelling is very important in the novel. The act of story telling gives the villagers hope and a sense of faith. There is a combination between fairy tale and horrific realism.
“The process of living is to surrender what, for a few glimmering days or years, you have been allowed to hold. But there is no such place as gone.”
― No One is Here Except All of Us“It doesn't always make sense, how you go about loving someone. Sometimes loving means gathering them back, sometimes it means sending them away.”- No One is Here Except All of Us“You are thinking of it wrong," she comforted me. "Everything stays true. You are yourself, no matter how much you have to change.”
―No One is Here Except All of Us
Casey Nixon ’19