Point of View

The novel is written from the first person perspective of Nishat, the main character and protagonist. Nishat is a teenage girl who immigrated with her family to Dublin Ireland from Bangladesh. Nishat is also a lesbian, and at the start of the novel comes out to her sister and and family. This makes Nishat’s perspective one of an outsider on several levels. She is an outsider in terms of culture as Bengali culture and food is very different than Irish culture and food; she is a woman of color in a mostly white society; and she is a lesbian. Jaigirdar writes from Nishat’s perspective as a person often experiencing this outsider status. While Flavia remembers Nishat in their younger days as leaving lunch to study in the library, Nishat remembers lunch as a place where she was made to feel othered because of...