Point of View

The story is told from the first-person subjective point of view, that of one of the younger members of the Persian Pickle Club, farm wife Queenie Bean. There are several important points to note about this aspect of the novel. The first relates to the use of language, which for the most part is reflective of the sort of woman Queenie is. She is minimally educated, moral, occasionally sentimental, and often secretive. This, in turn, relates to the second, and perhaps most important, point to note about the novel's point of view.

Once the reader gets to the end of the novel, at which point Queenie seems to confess that she is guilty of the murder that has been the focus of much of the narrative, s/he realizes that Queenie is, and has been, what is called in literary analysis "an unreliable narrator." Her word...