The world is not the same to everyone. It is just the way it goes-around the time the peony blossoms go to the dogs, the ground starts to shift.
In a landscape defined by the "neighbor to the south" and the slow, inevitable onslaught of a dominant language, Nicolas and his people exist in a state of constant negotiation. They are not lost-the world simply changed around them.
The Clear Side of Forever is a haunting post-mortem on what it means to belong when your status, your gender, and your very sense of self are revealed to be products of property and proximity, rather than biology.