Point of View

The novel is written in the first person point of view. The narrator is an older Desiderio who is looking back over fifty years to his adventures during the war. Due to the fact that the narrator is looking back on the action, there are often points in which Desiderio makes comments directly to the reader that give away certain aspects of the plot. For an example, Desiderio tells the reader in the introduction that he killed Albertina and he continues to regret it. There is also a time in chapter 4 when Desiderio tells the reader there is going to be a landslide several pages before the landslide actually happens.

The point of view of this novel is common in some modern literature. This point of view allows the reader to become intimately familiar with the main character, Desiderio, as well as learning some aspects of...