Point of View

This is a fact-based novel, meaning most or all of the basic events in it are true, but the author has potentially taken some artistic liberties in how those events are presented. The author has also potentially taken liberties with presenting her own inferences and speculations as factual. The narrator is Violaine, the technically fictionalized version of the novel’s author, Violaine Huisman. However, Catherine (the technically fictionalized version of Violaine Huisman’s mother) is the main character. The overall perspective of the novel is therefore a melding between that of Violaine and that of Catherine. Sometimes—specifically in Part I and Part III—Violaine narrates more from her own perspective, presenting her own memories of her mother. In Part II, the narration is more detached and omniscient, presenting the major events of Catherine’s life.

Although Catherine and Violaine are technically the only point-of-view...