comment on language /style

The narrator’s language use reflects her age and her perspective on the events in the novel. In an early chapter, the eleven-year-old narrator uses exclamation points and the majority of her narration describes her prepubescent worries (such as crushes, covering up cold sores, or making curfew). After one of her peers narrowly avoids drowning in a freezing lake, the narrator concludes the tale with: “We all cheer! It is past eleven; I rush home” (8). Later, as the narrator grows older, her narration includes more complex vocabulary and sentence structure: “Every inch of you is a mottled, sickly grey” (64). Throughout the novel there are no names except for Helen, Naja, and Savik. This suggests that these are the only three people the narrator recognizes as individuals, while the other characters are instead symbols for emotions or phenomena which the narrator experiences (such as Best Boy or Alpha, who are named for their influence on the narrator).