Point of View

While Emma is the main protagonist of the novel, the books allows for a considerable amount of focus on the story’s supporting characters. The other characters whose perspectives are directly explored are Raquel, Roberto, and Beatriz, with secondary attention given to Marcus, Miles, and Flamenguinho. The novel explores the contrasting natures of characters’ thoughts and experiences not only through direct contact and exchange between characters, but also by juxtaposing perspectives. Thus the novel’s short chapters and rapidly shifting point of view help to emphasize these juxtapositions. For example, Raquel and Emma have very different relationships to literature so that Beatriz’s writings affects their character arcs and thought processes in very different ways. Thus, the rapid shifts in perspective encourage the reader to observe these differences in thought and perspective.

One of the major dissonances in the way the novel handles perspective is...