Point of View

The novel’s narration is written in the present tense and the limited third person. Although Fraz is framed as the novel’s main character, the novel often shifts perspective between characters. Other point-of-view characters include Hark, Tovah, Kate, Teal, and Meg. By showcasing the thoughts, feelings, and perspectives of these other characters, the novel builds a sense of the characters’ collective struggles to find a moral path through their lives. The point-of-view characters are generally governed by an overall desire to act morally. (The narration never directly relays the perspective of antagonist characters such as Nat Dersh.) In this way, the novel emphasizes the challenges that the characters face in attempting to cultivate meaning, decency, and altruism in a chaotic and morally hazardous system of modern capitalism.

Although the antagonist characters such as Nat Dersh and Dieter Delgado never technically function as point-of-view characters...