Point of View

The Map of Love has no single point of view. Over all it is a third-person narrative by the character Amal, describing her collaboration with a distant cousin, Isabel Parkman, in discovering the story of Isabel's great grandmother Anna. Sometimes, an omniscient but impersonal narrator steps in and Amal is reduced to being one of the characters, while at other times it is clear Amal herself is speaking or writing. Much of the text consists of first-person quotations from Anna's letters and various journals, which are interspersed with Amal struggling to picture Anna's situation. There are also extensive excerpts from a diary kept by Anna's cousin and sister-in-law, Layla, providing an alternative third-person perspective on Anna's unfolding story. To this are added third-person narratives of Isabel's contacts with Amal, through correspondence, phone calls, e-mail, and in-person. Amal so closely identifies with her literary friends that she...