Point of View

The Queen of Dirt Island is written from the third person limited point of view. This means that for the majority of the novel, the third person narrator is situated in closest proximity to the main character Saoirse’s psyche. Because the narrator is inhabiting Saoirse’s consciousness, she describes the world the way that Saoirse perceives it. Throughout the first third of the novel, Saoirse’s perception and understanding of reality is defined by her life with her mother and grandmother. Therefore, the narrator renders the world in accordance with Saoirse’s childhood limitations. For example, in “Mysteries,” the narrator says, “They’d always surface again, though, those mysteries. Eavesdropping was a way to solve them, but it demanded patience. Clues were elusive” (11). The ways in which the narrator describes Saoirse’s experiences during this era of her life are in turn dictated by...