What is the author's tone in Democracy by Joan Didion?

The dual presence of Didion the novelist and Didion the character-the artist constructing her fiction vs. the reporter recording true-life events has a disconcerting effect upon the reader. The strongest presence is of Didion the novelist, so that although the reader is made vividly aware of several of the characters, there is never any serious attempt to tell events from their point of view. The unbroken awareness of the novel as artifice-of something being self-consciously manufactured by the writer-is compounded by Didion's stylistic quirks, which again draw the reader's attention to the author. The reader is kept at a cool distance from the characters and events by the narrative voice, an effect which (if the quotation from Wallace Stevens is kept in mind) would appear to be intentional, rather than a failure of engagement.