Point of View

The Three of Us is narrated from the first person points of view of the three main characters, the husband, the wife, and the friend. Part 1 is told from the first person point of view of the wife. Part 2 is told from the husband’s first person point of view, and Part 3 is told from the wife’s best friend Temi’s first person point of view. By dividing the novel between the main characters’ vantage points, the author is not only able to complicate her otherwise deceptively simple narrative, but to enact her concurrent thematic explorations of power and control, truth and reality, and expectations and want.

Indeed, each narrator’s first person point of view narration offers the reader an alternate entrance into and iteration of the narrative world. At the same time, the three narrative voices reinforce the notion that the characters...