Point of View

The novel utilizes a third-person omniscient perspective that describes the literal events of scenes while also sometimes conveying characters’ internal thoughts and feelings. When describing the events at the port of Algeciras, the narration uses the present tense, and when it describes past events from Maurice and Charlie's lives, it uses the past tense. When conveying dialogue, the novel does not use quotation marks.

The narration sometimes restricts its perspective to specific characters’ thoughts and experiences, and it sometimes describes actions and events without conveying any of the characters’ thoughts/feelings. In this way, the narration has the ability to shift its perspectival mode in order to achieve different narrative effects. For example, when describing Maurice and Charlie’s persistent feeling of paranoia regarding their illegal business, the narration gives reader’s direct access to their general mental/emotional landscape at that point in time...