Point of View

In The Snow Queen, Cunningham mainly uses alternating third person points of view, following the thoughts, feelings, and observations of main characters Barrett, Tyler, Beth, and Liz. This approach is useful both for helping us to understand the various perspectives of different characters, as well as for surprising the reader with things they do not yet know because it has not been revealed yet through a particular character, such as the fact that Liz and Tyler had been having a long-standing intimate relationship, a fact which is only revealed in the fifth segment of the book.

However, Cunningham also sometimes makes use of omniscient point of view, in which the narrator is God-like and all-knowing. This often takes the form of seeing into the future, such as when Foster meets a person with whom he is said to be living years later, or when Barrett...