Point of View

Leslye Walton tells the majority of her novel “The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender” in the first-person limited-omniscient reflective perspective, from the point of view of main character and principal protagonist, Ava Lavender. The novel, as described in the prologue, is an autobiographical account of Ava’s family and Ava’s early years, as explained by Ava herself. Because Ava is telling her own story, it is only natural that she write it in first-person, for the experiences are her own. The narrative is reflective, for as the prologue states, she is completed the work in March, 2014, and is thus looking back on her life at the age of 70. There are also a handful of sections of the novel told from the first-person perspective of Nathaniel Sorrows, in the form of extracted entries from the journal he keeps the spring and summer of...