Point of View

The Blizzard Party is written from Hazel Saltwater's first person point of view. At the start of the novel, Hazel says that she wants to rewrite her father's version of this story because "He'd gotten everything wrong" (25). She feels betrayed by her father's rendering. In his novel, she feels he has "published a terrible translation" of her life "without even consulting the original" (25). However, as soon as Hazel moves into the events of that night "at the Vornados',” Hazel almost entirely disappears from the pages of the narrative (73). Closed in the Vornados' guest bedroom, six-year-old Hazel has little to no access to the events, lives, and conversations she describes. The majority of the narrative, therefore, appears written from a third person free indirect point of view. Hazel's first person narrative pronouns largely disappear from the page, making her narrating identity "oddly dreamlike" (25). Each chapter veers...