Point of View

This novel is told using a first-person narrator, the adolescent boy Arturo Zamora. While Arturo’s narration is usually in the first-person perspective, there are an occasional number of important passages where Arturo switches to second-person, directly addressing the reader. One of these examples comes in the brief introductory chapter to the novel. Although Arturo does not address the reader as “you” in this passage, a typical sign of second-person narration, this passage does indeed address the reader: “These pages contain every detail — well, most details. I’ll leave stuff out like I brushed my teeth but didn’t floss, or I had a sandwich, or it was crazy humid that day in the park, which is why I wore a tank top, etc. But the big details of my epic fail are all here” (2). The novel concludes, in the Epilogue, with another passage that...