Point of View

Great Big Beautiful Life employs a layered narrative structure that blends first-person narration with embedded third-person story-within-a-story sections, allowing the reader to experience both personal emotion and reconstructed history. The primary perspective belongs to Alice Scott, the protagonist, whose first-person voice guides the reader through the novel’s events. Her narration is intimate, confessional, and highly subjective. It is filled with self-doubt, humor, and moments of raw vulnerability. This first-person point of view grounds the story in Alice’s emotional journey, making her a deeply relatable yet occasionally unreliable narrator. Her investment in Margaret Ives’s story—and later, her romantic and ethical conflicts—often blur her judgment, forcing readers to interpret the truth behind her impressions.

Interspersed throughout Alice’s narration are third-person “The Story” sections that recount the life of Margaret Ives, written in a cool, reportorial tone that mimics the detached voice...