Point of View

Across the collection, the author uses a variety of perspectival and narrational devices, including past tense narration, present tense narration, first person, second person, and third person. However, most of the stories maintain one character perspective throughout. In other words, most of the stories have only one narrator or point-of-view character, and the story is conveyed entirely through their thoughts and experiences. Point-of-view characters include Heather in “These Are Facts,” Peter in “A Most Blessed and Auspicious Occasion,” Yoni in “We Men of Science,” Virginia in “You Want to Know What Plays Are Like?,” Lucinda in “The Average of All Possible Things,” and others. The personalities and goals of the point-of-view characters shape the presentation of the narratives, such as Peter’s resistance to tradition in “A Blessed and Most Auspicious Occasion.”

Some of the stories use less conventional perspectival modes, such as the stories...