Both: male and female; dead and alive; watched and watcher. This is a gentle, lyrical novel featuring two central characters, a Renaissance painter and a grief-stricken English teenager. They occupy their own narrative strands, which, though separate, are interconnected, and which can be read in an order chosen by the reader (I lack imagination, so I just started at the beginning).
I’m fairly set in my ways and crotchety when it comes to tinkering with the format of the novel, but this was skilfully done and I couldn’t say it upset me too much. Time is given a fluidity, both within the individual narratives and across them, which doesn’t feel gimmicky but is appropriate to the themes and subject-matter. The prose is stream-of-consciousness at times, but it’s usually fairly clear what’s going on, so the vagueness doesn’t intrude on the experience of the reader (or at least that’s how I found it). I don’t often go for this kind of thing, but I was engrossed and did, in the end, enjoy it very much. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize.