Point of View

The story is told from the third person, omniscient perspective – that is, with narration exploring the inner lives of several characters. This is different from the third person limited point of view, which only focuses on the inner life of a single character: here, the three major characters (Naomi, Sam, Faoud) and several of the mid-range characters (Jimmie, Carissa, Rockhold) are considered, if not in equal breadth (i.e. in terms of page space), in similar depth. What is particularly worth noting about this stylistic choice is that often, shifts in focus between characters take place within relatively short distances from each other, sometimes even within paragraphs. There are, in fact, points in sections that involve Naomi and Sam when the shifts in perspective are so close and so tight that when the pronoun “she” is used, it is not entirely clear to which character...