Point of View

Kerry Lonsdale tells her novel Everything We Keep in the first-person limited-omniscient perspective from the point of view of main character and principal protagonist, Aimee. This is done because the novel comprises Aimee’s story of losing, finding, and losing James, while finding, losing, and finding love again. The first-person narrative mode creates an intimate relationship between Aimee and the reader, as the reader becomes the sole individual privileged with Aimee’s innermost thoughts and feelings. This is critical given the immense emotional complexity of the situation, in which Aimee believes that James is dead, only later to hope against hope he is alive. This also allows the reader to understand not only Aimee’s frame of mind, but the process of her thoughts and logic as she comes to accept that James is alive. At the same time, the limited-omniscient aspect of the narrative...