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"The Mighty Angel" by Jerzy Pilch, a Polish novel about "the alcoholic misadventures of a writer named Jerzy."

The soprano

I don't feel like I ever quite grasped the nature of the relationship between Sonechka and Maria Nikolaevna. Sometimes Sonechka seemed to admire the singer and sometimes to loathe her. Sometimes Maria treated Sonechka like a friend and sometimes like a servant. It was fairly bizarre, considering that they lived together and spent so much time in each other's company. Sonechka wanted to make Maria suffer, but at one point she also wanted to free her by shooting her husband. Any thoughts on this strange dynamic? Or on Sonechka's theory that some people are just imperturbably happy and that their happiness fundamentally sets them apart from others?

Sonechka

What are your thoughts on the first-person narrator in "The Accompanist"? Did you sympathize with her plight in life? Did her reactions to her circumstances seem normal and understandable, or perhaps somewhat pathological?