Point of View

Carson's point of view is third person omniscient, floating from character to character at will, depending on the circumstance. During the Wife of Brain sections, the narrator becomes more objective, distanced, and perhaps ironic, surveying the scene like a Greek chorus. The dialogue sections, naturally, have no point of view or narration at all. The bulk of the novel, however, is focalized through G's mediations and experience. Carson at times delves into the minds of the other characters, to explore their inner worlds more thoroughly, but mostly she keeps her narrative gaze on G.

Sometimes the narrator seems to address the reader directly; sometimes the sentences take on a stream-of-consciousness texture, diving directly into a character's thoughts, recreating the associations between their ideas, mapping how their minds move. Other times, they wander in a scholarly fashion through various ideas and historical events, as though the...