Editing Life: A User's Manual (section)

==Structure==
The entire block is primarily presented frozen in time, on 23 June 1975, just before 8 pm, moments after the death of Bartlebooth. Nonetheless, the constraint system creates hundreds of separate stories concerning the inhabitants of the block, past and present, and the other people in their lives. The story of Bartlebooth is the principal thread, but it interlinks with many others.

Another key thread is the painter Serge Valène's final project. Bartlebooth hires him as a tutor before embarking on his tour of the world, and buys himself a flat in the same block where Valène lives. He is one of several painters who have lived in the block over the century. He plans to paint the entire apartment block, seen in elevation with the facade removed, showing all the occupants and the details of their lives: Valène, a character in the novel, seeks to create a representation of the novel as a painting. Chapter 51, falling in the middle of the book, lists all of Valène's ideas, and in the process picks out the key stories seen so far and yet to come.

Both Bartlebooth and Valène fail in their projects; failure is a recurring theme in many of the stories.