Point of View

The point of view of the novel is an omniscient third that zeroes in on select characters at will. The novel starts out with a prologue that is told in an objective omniscient. No characters, aside from Alice, are specifically named. Rather, they are kept vague (the women, the men, the retreat leader, etc.) in order to disorient the reader and add to the sense of terror that exists in the bushland. The first chapter makes a dramatic shift in that the narrator zooms close into the third-person perspective of Aaron Falk. The perspective remains with him for the next two chapters, but then a break occurs and the omniscient narrator returns to the anonymity of the four women in the bushland on Sunday morning: “The woman could see her own fear reflected in the three faces staring back at her. Her heartbeat thumped, and...