Point of View

The point of view of this novel is first-person, limited omniscience told in past tense narration through the perspective of Marion Stone. Because the novel spans many decades, including those in which Marion hasn't been born yet, he paraphrases the novel by saying that much of the information he has gathered about his mother comes from others' accounts of her life and that he is simply putting all that information together to form a narrative, to help him understand where he came from. Marion's point-of-view is completely reliable. As this novel is Marion's personal journey to understand the hidden histories in his family, he has no reason to twist the truth for the reader. He is plainly and openly honest about his fears, his insecurities, and his vulnerabilities throughout life. Although the novel is told in past tense from the perspective of an adult Marion, the...