Point of View

With the exception of the first half of the second-to-last chapter, the book is told entirely in the first person point of view of Lionel Essrog, an unlicensed ‘detective’ on the hunt for the man responsible for his mentor’s death. He suffers from Tourette’s syndrome, a compulsive condition that prompts him to rearrange words and phrases in often profound and profane ways both in dialogue and in narration. This imposes extreme influence on the novel as a whole.

The section that does not conform to this point of view stands in stark contrast to the rest of the book and seems comparatively distant in third person, relating the actual reasons behind the novel’s often convoluted plot.

Setting

The majority of the novel is set in New York, and there is a vast disconnect between the parts set in Brooklyn, which seem awash...