Point of View

The majority of the stories in Philyaw’s book are told from the point of view of a first-person narrator. Exceptions to this include “How to Make Love to a Physicist” (94), which is written entirely in the second person, and “When Eddie Levert Comes” (155), which is written from a limited third-person point of view from the perspective of a character referred to only as Daughter. Additionally, “Jael” (113) is narrated by two different first-person narrators, a teenage girl named Jael and her great-grandmother, Granny. The first-person narrations in the book as well as the variety of points of view allow for a wide scope of narrative voices and styles. Even the stories that are not written in the first person employ a distinct sense of character. For example, Lyra is the “you” referred to in “How to Make Love to a Physicist,” but Philyaw gives the...