Point of View

This novel is told from the point of view of a third-person narrator. Consider: “Red’s reflection stared through her, but the glass and the darkness didn’t get her quite right, blurring the details” (3). The narrator is not omniscient, he tells the story from Red’s point of view. The reader knows all of Red’s thoughts and emotions, but only knows what other characters are thinking through their conversations.

This point of view works well because it is Red who has the secret that the sniper wants. The story of her mother’s death is central to the plot of the novel even though the presentation seems clunky and unrelated at first. Red’s constant feelings of guilt drive the foreboding feeling in the novel as she is constantly on the lookout for who is on her side and who is against her...