Point of View

The Music of Bees implements the third-person point of view and is written in the past tense. The narration is limited to inhabiting only the perspectives of the three main characters, Alice Holtzman, Jake Stevenson, and Harry Stokes. The author subtly includes the apiary as the forth protagonist by integrating facts about the bees into the narrative.

At the outset of the novel, the perspectives change with the chapters so that each chapter is limited to presenting the perspective of only one character at a time. As the narrative develops, however, the narrator begins to inhabit multiple characters in one chapter. This structure enables the author to focus the beginning of the novel on developing the main characters, establishing the unique traits of each protagonist and giving the audience time to emotionally invest in them. After the initial phase of character development, the narrative slowly...