Point of View

The novel is written in close third-person with a limited narrator who follows Meg and Singleton’s perspectives in alternate chapters, with occasional flashes of Hank’s point of view as well. These perspectives vary widely in tone and pacing, as Singleton remains mostly lucid, if sometimes paranoid and confused, while Meg is often drugged and entirely confused by her surroundings. Their plot lines remain largely disconnected until the novel’s end, when they meet and subsequently realize that they share a connection through the departed Billy-T. In addition to the main body of the novel, Hystopia is complicated by the notes included at the novel’s beginning and end. Some of these are the first-person writing of Eugene Allen, and the rest that of a fictional editor who is commentating on the work. It also offers first-person interjections from interviews with Allen’s friends...