Point of View

Popkey's novel is told by a first person narrator, whose intimate thoughts and interpretations after the fact are given to the reader in high-resolution detail. This intimate narration allows Popkey to frequently employ meta-ironies, especially when Popkey's narrator makes comments about narration, storytelling, self-knowledge, and interpretation. For example, after Fran attacks the narrator's ridiculous attempts to make meaning of her life at the apartment, the narrator defends not only the story she told at the apartment, but the novel as a whole. "Of course life is random, a series of coincidences, etc, but...to live you must attempt to make sense of it, and that's what narrative's for" (161). This assertion takes on a double meaning in the context of the novel as a whole; Popkey's narrator does not believe in destiny or fate, and comfortably acknowledges that many of life's vicissitudes are not within the...