Point of View

All of the stories in this collection are written in the first person. The narrator is usually the central character of the story. The one exception is “Isabelle,” in which Split Lip may arguably be a more central character than the narrator. In addition, the narration is usually in the present tense, unless the narrator is specifically recalling past events. Again, the one exception is “Isabelle,” in which the narration defaults to the past tense, as if the narrator is recalling all of the story’s events as things that happened in his past. The stories’ strict adherence to the first person creates an emphasis on personal, individual experience. The characters’ thoughts and emotions are illustrated with a sense of immediacy. However the ideas presented by the stories may generally be applied societally and universally, and thus Saunders explores how personal and sociopolitical dynamics are...