Love how you worded all this. The whole time I was reading your entry, I was like, yeah this is it. One thing I found interesting was that you called the narrator Marcel--I didn't realize that was an established unofficial name for the character until I looked it up.

I can definitely commiserate with your observation that fictional characters can seem much more 'emotionally accessible' because we can understand them on levels that we can't always reach with people in real life.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on future reads!