Point of View

Hawley jumps perspectives throughout the novel. Much of it is told from shifting third-person perspectives; there is not one omniscient narrator, it seems, but rather a coterie of limited third-person narrators that occasionally align with particular perspective characters and at other times float more freely, providing sweeping, biographical background information about the novel’s characters. Furthermore, there are some sections of the novel—primarily those dealing with the broad political happenings of its universe—that are written in a third-person collective voice (using the pronoun “we”), and still further sections that are not narrated at all but are instead direct addresses from Hawley to his readers.

The shifting perspective creates a kaleidoscopic ensemble effect that allows Hawley to examine the ideas he puts forward from a number of different perspectives—a strategy instrumental to his novel’s themes on political identity and its importance. The...