Point of View

The novel relies on close third-person narration that alternates between the mother and the son, and this choice makes emotional distance feel like a form of geography. Because each section stays tightly aligned with one consciousness at a time, the reader experiences how both characters interpret the same situation through radically different assumptions. The mother reads silence as danger and questions as care, so her point of view emphasizes vigilance, physical sensation, and the urge to turn worry into action. The son reads questions as pressure and intimacy as potential coercion, so his perspective emphasizes control, routine, and the constant work of choosing what to reveal. The alternation does not create a balanced, omniscient overview; it creates a staged misrecognition, where readers can see how love and fear travel along the same lines but produce opposite conclusions.

This limited access also shapes the book’s...