Point of View

Talty deploys two first-person perspectives, and largely jockeys back and forth between them. His two narrators are a young boy named David and a young adult man named Dee.

David’s narration, which comes from the perspective of a child, is often impressionistic and incomplete, allowing Talty to communicate information to the reader without having David explain outright what is happening. In “In a Jar,” for instance, David’s understanding of what happens to his sister is not entirely clear. The audience is able to understand that Paige has lost her child and is subsequently brought to bury it by Frick and Mom, but David cannot seem to understand the full scope of what is happening beyond the fact that his sister is in pain and Mom and Frick require him to donate a crate so as to go forward with the burial. David also...