Point of View

The novel is narrated in the first-person past by the narrator. When the novel begins, the narrator seems to be incidental to the main storyline, which focuses on the beasts and their strange stories. “Sorrowful Beasts” hardly features any information, thoughts, or feelings from the narrator. We are not ever told the narrator’s name, and we do not learn her gender until we see her interact with her niece, Lucia, who calls her “auntie” in the third chapter.

However, as the novel goes on, we are slowly introduced to the basic facts of the narrator’s life. We learn that she was once the star student in the university’s zoological department, which explains her fascination and knowledge of beasts. We also learn that she dropped out of school because she could not bear the cold detachment required of a zoologist. She could not...