Point of View

Steve Kluger tells his novel "My Most Excellent Year" in the first-person narrative mode, from the perspective of each of his three main characters writing in their journals and college application essays. This is done because of the diverse nature and backgrounds of the three main characters. Ordinarily, the first-person perspective is confined to the main character who narrates the entire story to avoid confusion between switching back and forth between different characters, but here, Kluger has opted for three story-tellers. This is a task well-accomplished because there are only three main characters, and the chapters are entitled with the name of the character who is telling the chapter, avoiding confusion for the reader. Further, each character tells an entire chapter, so to as avoid internal chapter narration confusion.

Setting

The setting of Steve Kluger's novel "My Most Excellent Year" is that of Massachusetts, in particular...