Point of View

The point of view in the novel is third person omniscient, though the narrator often sticks with one particular character's point of view for the course of a chapter, allowing the point of view occasionally to feel like third person limited. For example, in the first chapter, the reader is privy to Max's point of view. The reader sees Max watch the beautiful girl come into the Honky Tonk Club but the reader does not know how the girl, Helen, views Max other than by what she says to him. In chapter three, however the reader is able to learn the private thoughts of Dr. Crookman, Chuck Foster, and Hank Johnson, and so the omniscient quality of the narration is more apparent there.

The narrator is a reliable narrator in the sense that he is an observer of the scene and exists outside the consciousness of...