Point of View

The point of view in most of the stories in this collection is obscure—at once inside and outside the narrative. When he uses the voice of the objective narrator, the author never identifies himself but speaks as if he has a kind of infused enlightenment of not only the physical world but of the spirit world which is superimposed. The detached, anonymous narrative voice enables the author to assume any point of view within the story, including the subjective point of view of each of the characters in the living, physical world as well as their souls and the strange, sometimes hideous spiritual deformities they carry like a curse. The experience for the reader is not unlike that of a child at summer camp, gathered around a blazing campfire with other children listening to adults tell hair-raising ghost stories. Improbability and disbelief become suspended...