Point of View

Gold Diggers is written from Neil's first person point of view. Though the novel begins when Neil is a teenager in high school, Neil's narrative voice often straddles different eras in time. For example, Chapter 1 begins with the line: "When I was younger, I consisted of little but my parents' ambitions for who I was to become" (11). In this opening line, Neil is describing his life during the ninth grade, however, he writes from his distanced perspective as an adult. Over the course of the first five chapters, Neil's narrative remains lodged within the scenes and events of his high school experience. However, much like the novel's opening line, Neil often tends towards retrospective asides throughout Part One. Another such example occurs towards the latter half of Chapter 5. The passage begins with Neil describing an "instant messenger" exchange with Anita a "few days before she...