Point of View

The story is written in third person from Alice's perspective. The reader sees and knows only what Alice knows, meaning the perspective is greatly limited. This limitation means the reader sometimes has to figure out what's going on. For example, Alice realizes one day that she's going to be late for class. She rushes to get there and -*discovers that class hasn't yet begun. She takes a seat and remains there for twenty minutes, until it's evident that the professor isn't going to show up. It seems evident that Alice is supposed to be teaching the class and has forgotten that detail, but the reader doesn't know this for certain until much later, when Alice is reading the student evaluations.

This is seen again near the end of the book when Alice can no longer remember names. She refers to Anna as “the mom...