Point of View

Through his utilization of the third-person perspective, St. Aubyn creates a sense of narrative equivalence across his wide cast of characters. There is no principal, first-person narrator; instead, St. Aubyn includes the third-person omniscient point of view from Olivia, Francis, Lucy, Hunter, Father Guido, Saul, Martin and many others. In this way, St. Aubyn produces a sense of formal universality. A vast array of characters, regardless of their supposed centrality to the story, receive the same authorial treatment. This dynamic—this confusion between major and minor characters—forces the reader to extend empathy to a wider range of individuals within the story. St. Aubyn thus replicates, on a formal level, one of the primary themes of his novel: the need for compassion in human relationships. Importantly, his choice to utilize a fairly omniscient point of view, in which the reader gains insight into the thoughts...