Point of View

The point-of-view in this novel is that of the third-person limited. Rather than an omniscient perspective, the novel tends to stay tightly focused on two characters’ perspectives: that of Yale Tishman, an arts director at Northwestern University, and that of Fiona Marcus, an older woman struggling to reconnect with her daughter. The limited third-person perspective means that the reader can only imagine the perspective of other characters like Charlie Keene, Yale’s cheating and hypocritical boyfriend, and Claire, Fiona’s reclusive and stand-offish daughter. This perspective ultimately makes Yale and Fiona more sympathetic to the reader than the other characters, though many of the characters are sympathetically portrayed.

The duality of these perspectives has certain narrative consequences as well. Through the addition of Fiona’s perspective, the novel is able to show the events that followed Yale’s death and how Yale’s death has...