At the end of Sigrid Nunez's much praised first novel, A Feather on the Breath of God, the protagonist, a daughter of joyless immigrant parents, leaves her pained life in New York City to teach English in China. Never having experienced a sense of emotional belonging, she now chooses a life that will make her perpetual sense of alienation all the more urgent.
It is fitting that the heroine of the author's fine, quietly melancholy second book, Naked Sleeper (HarperCollins; 235 pages; $23), should share her predecessor's vocation, for she too seems compelled to intensify her sense of disconnect. Though Nona...