Point of View

The story is told from two different narrative points of view. The first and final chapters, essentially the book's prologue and epilogue, are recounted in the first person subjective voice of narrator Howard Hutchings, an adult recalling an incident in his childhood and doing so from the point of view of a somewhat naïve, but undeniably open minded, young man discovering new truths about himself, his family, and his life. Howard portrays himself as excited about the possibilities of life, both in terms of what he is experiencing in the present and, as the final chapter makes clear, how experiences in the past have made his present day family who and what they are.

The chapters in between are recounted in the first person subjective voice of Tilly, who appears in the Howard Hutchings chapters as his elderly grandmother and who, like Howard, is an...