Point of View

The novel is written mostly in the third-person with an omniscient narrator. The perspective often switches between Janie, Dr. Anderson, Denise, Charlie, Paul Clifford and, briefly, Noah. The beginning of certain chapters opens with a sample case study from Jim Tucker’s Life After Life. These case studies are told in a third-person, narrative voice.

In the beginning of the novel, character’s perspectives alternate between chapters. For instance, Chapter One opens with Janie’s perspective, while Chapter Two switches to Dr. Anderson’s. The novel continues to alternate like this, until Chapter 25 when the stress of Noah’s disappearance splits the chapter into fractured perspectives as we watch the chaos from both Janie and Denise’s perspective. Guskin could be using this fractured perspective to represent how the lines between Janie and Denise are becoming blurred as both acknowledge the fact that they are...