Point of View

The novel is written from the first person point of view of an unnamed narrator. Because the novel is primarily interested in exploring the narrator’s interior realm, this first person vantage point acts in service of the novel’s central stakes and themes. At the start of the novel, the narrator admits to the coins that although she wants to think “about the soul of time,” she has “so little practice thinking about the soul of time, and so much practice thinking about myself” (7, Heti’s). Indeed the majority of the novel’s narrative tension and conflict is derived from the narrator’s metacognition. Throughout the novel, she is constantly in thought: considering not only what she wants to do regarding her future, but what she thinks about her indecision, her desire, and her confusion.

Although the novel is driven by the narrator’s...