Ivan Koubek
Ivan, the younger Koubek brother, is a competitive chess player and former prodigy who struggles to navigate his father's death. He is fresh out of university (having earned a degree in theoretical physics), working as a freelance data analyst to support his dream of becoming an internationally renowned chess player. However, his chess performance began to suffer as a result of grief. After meeting Margaret at a chess event, Ivan falls in love with her despite the fact that she is 14 years his senior. Their age difference does not bother him in the slightest. In fact, he urges Margaret not to care about other people's judgments.
Socially awkward and at times insecure, Ivan resents living in his brother's shadow. Their fraught relationship corrodes into a contemptuous silence and later into a physical fight. Over the course of the novel, Ivan deepens his understanding of himself and others mostly as a result of what his relationships teach him.
Peter
Peter is a thirty-two-year-old human rights lawyer who struggles to reconcile his emotional, intellectual, and physical needs. His sense of righteousness contrasts with his existential despair. Although Peter was not as close to their father as Ivan was, he also experiences immense grief upon their father's death. Peter is entangled with two women over the course of the novel. He is still in love with Sylvia, his former partner who provides stability, care, and intellectual vigor in his life. Naomi, on the other hand, satisfies his desire and passion. Though Peter wishes to be a good, ethical, and "normal" person, he often feels intense shame for his more impulsive and destructive behaviors. In trying to rationalize his emotional incoherence, he ends up using both Sylvia and Naomi to regulate himself. He also has an intense falling out with Ivan after criticizing Margaret. By the end of the novel, Peter recognizes his unhealthy patterns and begins to work toward changing them.
Naomi
Naomi is a 23-year-old college student who makes difficult choices in order to survive. She dates Peter while accepting his emotional entanglement with his ex-girlfriend. In the face of rising rents and homelessness, she occasionally supplements her income via online sex work. Peter also financially supports her, later providing her housing after she is evicted. Of all the characters in the novel, Naomi is the most vulnerable to poverty and insecurity. Her personality can be described as fun-loving, vivacious, and passionate, though the reader only sees her through Peter's eyes.
Sylvia
Sylvia is a 32-year-old university professor of modern literature. Following a traumatic car accident in her mid-twenties, she has struggled for years with chronic pain. Unable to suffer the indignity of feeling unable to have an equal partnership, she broke up with Peter. However, even years later, they continue to care deeply for one another and spend time together. Sylvia knows about Naomi's presence in Peter's life. She often asks about Naomi's well-being and encourages Peter to embrace his relationship with Naomi. After a sexual encounter between Sylvia and Peter leads to a misunderstanding, Sylvia refuses to let Peter use her to escape intimacy with Naomi. By the end of the novel, Sylvia and Naomi join forces in their combined love for Peter.
Margaret
Margaret is a 36-year-old arts program director who becomes romantically involved with Ivan after meeting him at a chess exhibition. She separated from her former husband Ricky due to his alcoholism. She reveals that she grew tired of being a self-sacrificing martyr and just wanted to enjoy some stability on her own. Her feelings for Ivan take her by surprise as she never sought to enter a new relationship, let alone one with a 14-year age gap.
Although she struggles to accept her age difference with Ivan, their relationship is not exploitative. However, the question of whether their relationship is ethical, and the opinions of their respective friends, continue to bother Margaret. She realizes that being with Ivan is not a romantic escape from real life, but rather another experience that will offer its own joy, pain, and learning.
Christine
Christine is Peter and Ivan's mother. She left their father when Ivan was around five years old. The brothers always felt that Christine preferred her new family (including the boys' step-siblings) over them, and this distance took its toll on both Peter and Ivan. During the novel, Christine plays a complex role in their family dynamic. She repeatedly voices her resentment at being saddled with caring for Ivan's dog. Ivan also states that he believes that she and Peter do not get along due to their strong personalities and need for control. However, Christine provides solace for Peter after his fallout with Sylvia, and she constantly invites Peter and Ivan to spend Christmas together. Overall, Christine maintains a relationship with her sons even if it is, at times, strained.
The Koubek brothers' father
The novel takes place in the months following the death of Ivan and Peter's unnamed father. He was an engineer who emigrated from Slovakia to Ireland in the 1980s. He was diagnosed with cancer in his sixties and passed away after five years of treatment. Though physically absent from the novel, the Koubek brothers' father is symbolically important, and his death provides the background context for the narrative.
