Point of View

The novel is written from a third-person omniscient point of view that generally focuses on one character at a time: most commonly Rosie, sometimes Penn, and occasionally Claude/Poppy. When the narrative point of view is focused on one character, it has the feel of a third-person limited point of view. For instance, when Rosie and Penn are fighting over whether Poppy should go on hormone blockers, the narrator only conveys Rosie’s interior reactions – “Rosie could hear herself shrieking but could think of nothing to do about it” (206) – and Penn’s exterior ones – Penn raised himself from his knees to sit next to her on the bed and held both her hands in his” (206). Because Rosie knows Penn so well, however, she nevertheless has insight into his thinking. Thus, when the narrator comments, “It wasn’t that Penn didn’t understand these things. It...