Point of View

The point of view of the novel is told in the first-person from Ava’s perspective. Although the tense is past, there is no narrative present from which an older, wiser Ava is narrating the story of her youth. Rather, the reader is told about the events as if Ava were currently experiencing them. Everything we know about the world and the people in it, we know through the lens of Ava’s perception. And, while Ava is not exactly an unreliable narrator in that she attempts to be duplicitous, she does have an inability to perceive herself and those around her in a true or honest manner. She is very self-centered, and her world-view is limited to herself. Her thinking is also completely black and white, so people are always either cool or uncool, nice or mean, with no grey area in between. She...