Point of View

Throughout the novel, the author employs the first person plural, first person singular, third person, and second person points of view. Despite these frequent toggles between narrative perspectives and personal pronouns, the novel is narrated by a single individual: an unnamed female artist reflecting on her past experiences, reading habits, and writing processes.

Rather than attempts to alienate or disorient the reader, the author's inventive point of view choices are in service of her distinct narrator's experience. This means that the shifts between the aforementioned points of view are enacting the narrator's complex internal experience. For example, the entirety of Chapter I, "A Silly Business," appears in the first person plural point of view: "Later on we often had a book with us. Later on. When we were a bit bigger at last though still nowhere near as big as the rest of them we...