Point of View

The novel is written in a first-person confessional style that seems to be addressed to an implicit listener or reader. It is written from the perspective of past experience, as a present day reflection on a relationship that the narrator, David, had with one of his former students eight years ago. Because it has the immediacy of a confession and the reflective, analytical structure of a memoir, the reader cannot take the narrator’s claims and perspectives for granted. The world and its inhabitants are seen exclusively through David’s myopic eyes, and thus his perspective is bound to be flawed, limited, and biased.

Also, because of the provocative, controversial nature of his lifestyle—affairs with former students, adultery, a worship of all things hedonistic—the reader is forced to evaluate not only their own opinions on these issues but David’s as well. He...