Point of View

The novel is written from the third person point of view. With the exception of a few pages in Chapter 1, the third person narration is limited to the main character Eilish Stack’s perspective. This means that the narrator inhabits Eilish’s consciousness throughout the majority of the novel. As a result of this close relationship between the narrator and the protagonist, the novel centers Eilish’s experiences and state of mind from beginning to end. The narrator assumes Eilish’s manner of seeing and processing and thus describes the narrative world according to how she is experiencing it. The author establishes this formal dynamic at the start of Chapter 1: “Tired now,” says the narrator of Eilish, “the day almost behind her, all that still has to be done before bed and the children settled in the living room, this feeling of rest for a...