Point of View

The point of view in An Ice Cream War comes from the perspective of several different characters. The narrator is a third person omniscient storyteller who lets us see into the minds of the primary characters. This is not all done at once in single sections, but rather different chapters of the novel are told from the perspective of different characters. Throughout the novel we read the story from the perspective of Walter Smith, Erich von Bishop, Liesl von Bishop, Felix Cobb, Gabriel Cobb, and Charis Cobb.

Rather than make the novel confusing or disjointed, hearing the story from the perspective of multiple characters gives it a richness that could not be achieved otherwise. Often the characters perceive things in different ways and even blame each other for deeds. Had the story been told from the point of a single narrator, we could have seen the...