What is the author's style in The Innocent by Ian McEwan?

For the most part, the narrative is written from the third-person and limited point of view, focusing on the protagonist, Leonard Marnham, his experiences, insights, and reactions. This draws the reader fully into his journey of transformation, making the narrative of that journey immediate, active, and engaging. At times, however, the narrative shifts its overall focus to consider events from Maria's point of view, looking into her mind, feelings, and experiences of Maria. At such moments, the narrative offers insight into her emotional and psychological states, suggesting there is more to her and what she does than Marnham's perceptions and what the subsequent narrative conveys. While these changes in focus sometimes seem jarring and distracting, they also deepen insight into Marnham. In other words, seeing him through her eyes enables the reader to form a deeper and even more complete picture of who he is, why he is that way, and where he is at on his journey of transformation.

For the most part, the narrative is written in a straightforward and focused fashion, with the story unfolding with a linear progression. The result is a clearly shaped sense of forward narrative movement, of cause-and-effect progression from incident to reaction to action to incident and so on, which are all tied in with the narrative's Marnham-centric "Point of View" as outlined above.