Point of View

The novel is narrated in the third person with a tight limited focus on Phoebe’s perspective. This narrative choice aligns the reader closely with Phoebe’s inner world, offering access to her thoughts, memories, and shifting emotional states, while maintaining a degree of narrative distance. The result is a perspective that feels both intimate and constrained, mirroring Phoebe’s own psychological position throughout the novel.

By restricting the reader’s insight to Phoebe alone, the novel reinforces her sense of isolation in the early chapters. The reader sees the wedding and its many participants not as they are in themselves, but as they appear to Phoebe, for example Phoebe initially refers to the bridesmaids Nat and Suz, as High Bun and Neck Pillow before she discovers their real names. This means that moments of apparent connection are always tinged with uncertainty, because we cannot...