Point of View

Kelli Estes relates her novel The Girl Who Wrote in Silk in the third-person omniscient narrative mode from the point of view of an unnamed narrator. The third-person narrator acts as a unifying thread between both the stories of Mei Lien and Inara, which are distinct in times and language. The third-person narrator also allows readers unrestricted access to the past and the present, and even allows the reader to know things that Mei Lien and Inara could never know in their own respective time periods.

This intimate and unique insight into the novel’s plot gives the reader a fuller, more in-depth understanding of the narrative as a whole – two halves of a single story that make sense only when viewed in the context of one another. As such, the third-person narrator assures that the reader is able to make sense of all mysteries...