Point of View

Winterson primarily uses a first person, past tense perspective, with the story often colored, particularly in the case of Henri, by the focal character's hindsight. There are two protagonist narrators: Henri and Villanelle. The reader is privy to the thoughts and feelings of each, but only when they serve as narrator. When Henri narrates, for example, Villanelle is impenetrable.

Since each of the narrators is also a character in the story, there is a sense that the narration may be unreliable, biased by the character's involvement in the story. This is particularly true of Villanelle, who makes frequent allusions to supernatural forces that, for a time, seem to have questionable veracity. A commonly-repeated phrase throughout the novel is "I'm telling you stories. Trust me." Clearly Winterson intends the reader to question the narrator's reliability.

Winterson occasionally delves into nested storytelling, where a narrator purports to share...