Perspective

It Happened to Nancy has two perspectives and the degree to which one perspective dominates the other is ultimately determined by whether It Happened to Nancy is in fact a genuine work of non-fiction or not.

Assuming the book is a true account of a young girl's struggle with AIDS, the primary perspective of the book is Nancy's. Nancy is a fourteen-year-old girl from a divorced and middle-class family is a suburban town in South Carolina in the early 1990s. The book covers two years of her life. She has what one might regard as the stereotypical "good life" for someone in her time and place despite her parents' divorce and her asthma. Nancy is clearly bright, particularly with respect to her verbal abilities. Her diary is full of verbal expression even about the darkest moments in her young life.

Nancy is a committed Roman Catholic and her...