Point of View

The novel is written mostly in the third person with a limited narrator who follows the boy’s perspective. This ensures that the reader fully identifies with the boy throughout his journey. It also allows the reader to gradually develop a larger knowledge of the boy’s trauma as he himself internally confronts it. It is only as the boy allows repressed memories to surface that the sexual nature of his abuse is revealed, and this gives him a narrative agency that makes the novel’s attempt to take on this difficult theme feel less exploitative.

There are also occasional discrepancies in the narrative voice during which the narrator speaks from an omniscient perspective. These are brief but have an important effect on the plot. One important example occurs in chapter 3: “During breakfast, he witnessed, for the first time, the harnessing of the donkey, a...