Point of View

The majority of this novel is told from the point of view of a third-person narrator. Consider the opening sentence of Chapter 1: “Ivy Jacob came from Boston, and had lived her whole life on Beacon Hill, but whenever she was asked where she grew up, she would say, West of the moon” (5). The narrator refers to Ivy by her given name and then refers to her as “she,” a pronoun indicating the use of the third person. The exception to this use of the third person comes in the Prologue where Mia records her escape from the community from the first-person point of view: “I began my life for the second time on a June night in the year I turned fifteen” (V). This first-person point of view helps the reader develop an emotional bond with Mia as she describes how her books were burnt...