Point of View

Leaving the Atocha Station is narrated from the point of view of the main character, Adam Gordon. Adam uses first-person singular pronouns to refer to himself throughout the entirety of this story. The only exception to this is one instance when Adam has a flashback to childhood. In recounting this Adam uses the third-person singular, but does so in a self-reflexive, knowing way, as this narrative shift is a poetic flight of fancy. He narrates his slightly disorienting digression from reading Lorca in his Madrid apartment as an adult to the moment from his childhood in the following way: “I couldn’t bring myself to open the book. It was worse than having a sinking feeling; I was a sinking feeling, an unplayable adagio for string; internal distances expanded and collapsed when I breathed. It was like failing to have awoken at the right point...