Point of View

The novel’s shifting point of view argues that no single witness can hold the whole truth of Uz, and it makes the reader feel how stories become power when a community is desperate for closure. Much of the narrative unfolds through close first person voices, which place the reader inside Antonina Rossi’s guarded interior life and inside Asphodel Dell Oletsky’s urgent, competitive consciousness. Antonina’s perspective is shaped by practiced self protection; she thinks in procedures, limits, receipts, and obligations, so even tenderness is filtered through risk assessment. Dell’s voice, by contrast, moves with the tempo of sport and adolescence, making her attention sharp, social, and tactical, which helps the reader understand how courage can be learned as a form of teamwork.

A third interior angle, Harp Oletsky’s, broadens the moral frame by showing how leadership warps perception under crisis...