Point of View

The novel is written in the first person point of view. The narrator is Benji, a young man who is coming to discover himself over the summer of 1985. The narration is written in such a way that the reader occasionally gets snippets of comment from Benji as an adult looking back on his life and explaining things to the reader that young Benji could not know or understand. In this way, the reader also gets an idea of what will happen to this group of young men as they grow older.

Whithead's writing in first person gives the reader the impression that he is writing a personal diary for his children or other family members. The point of view is highly intimate while at the same time the language is less than intimate, giving the story a mixed sense of intimacy and a sense of the...