Point of View

Eighteen-year-old Maja Norberg narrates the entire novel in first person. She has a sharp critical eye that unintentionally creates a devastating critique of Swedish society or that of any advanced capitalistic country. She addresses the reader at several points in the second-person plural to engage and persuade her reader, since the reader is placed in the position of juror. Maja's is a reliable narrator who is unsure of whether she has behaved like a monster or like a misguided teen. In effect, she asks the readers to help her understand what has happened.

At the beginning of the novel she makes sarcastic remarks about “morons” and makes up unflattering nicknames for others, like “Pancake.” But toward the end of the narrative, she makes fewer hostile comments and her negative remarks refer more often to herself. In the last chapter, after the charges against her have...