Point of View

Killing Stella is narrated from the first-person point of view of Anna. Thus, the reader is dependent upon Anna’s consciousness. There is no external frame and no access to events other than Anna's. What the reader knows is identical to what Anna believes she knows, and the limits of Anna's understanding are the limits of the text itself.

Anna’s unreliability is established in the narrative when she reports perceptions that cannot be literally true, such as her belief about the garden slowly moving away from the house and the windows becoming opaque. Another assertion that defies logic occurs when Anna claims the Annette, her daughter, laughs the way Richard would laugh if he were a little girl. These moments clearly signal that Anna’s perceptions are distorted and her mental state is unstable. They also serve as a warning to the reader that...