Point of View

Cal is a first person narrator who is also omniscient, an unusual storytelling device. Besides relating all his own inner thoughts and feelings, Cal has complete insight into the thoughts and feelings of all the other characters in the novel. He accurately describes in detail the events of his grandparents’ and parents’ lives that occurred for four decades before he was born. Despite the strangeness of Cal’s ability to describe not only his own conception but that of his parents, Cal is presented as a reliable narrator. The novel is structured as his personal memoir, and readers have no reason to distrust the truth as he tells it.

Occasionally, Cal’s omniscience becomes limited: he cannot penetrate the thoughts of Desdemona after Lefty dies. He also sometimes refers to “Calliope” in the third person, describing the thoughts and feelings of his feminine self with...