Point of View

Exciting Times is written from the first person point of view of the protagonist, Ava. Ava is a 22-year-old recent college graduate from Dublin, Ireland. Although she convinces herself that moving to Hong Kong at the start of the novel will resolve her internal unrest and her sadness, she also admits that she has “no idea who [she is]” (5). Her unresolved sense of self therefore destabilizes her narrative account. Indeed, Ava’s declarative sentence structures affect a confident, assured narrative tone that contrasts with her otherwise haphazard and insecure behaviors. For example, Ava asserts that she and Julian are good for each other because she “enjoy[s] his money and he enjoy[s] how easily impressed” she is by it, but meanwhile spends nights alone in her room crying that Julian does “not want [her] to be his girlfriend” (4, 26). Therefore, her narration often contradicts her...