Point of View

The majority of this novel is told in the first person point of view of Vanessa Thompson as she describes her marriage to Richard and the aftermath. In the first part of the novel the point of view switches between the first person point of view of Vanessa and a third person point of view that tells the story of Nellie, a woman preparing for her marriage to Richard. Also, the Vanessa chapters use the present tense, while the Nellie chapters use the past tense. Because of the different points of view, the reader assumes Vanessa and Nellie are two different people. It is only at the end of Part 1 that the authors reveal that Vanessa and Nellie are the same person. Nellie was Richard’s nickname for Vanessa. The third person point of view is used to tell Nellie’s story because Vanessa considers...