As he had done in his two previous novels, Butler in Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock devotes major portions of his technical skill and effort to the matter of narrative voice. In Jujitsu for Christ (1986) and Nightshade the self-proclaimed narrators' identities are not fully revealed until the final chapters — Marcus Gandy and the artificial intelligence Mandrake, respectively, although as we have seen, a case can be made for Marcus as the supposedly real "author" of both books. In Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock, as in Nightshade, the nominal narrator is a nonhuman entity but is clearly identified from the opening line: "Howdy, I'm the Holy Ghost."

Given what we know of the Holy Ghost's nature and activities from theology and tradition, the possibilities for narrative perspective such a voice provides are inherently limitless. Although part of a larger organization — the...