Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone Literary Elements

Mystery

Set in the Sky Lodge, a ski resort in Australia

First-person narration from the perspective of Ernie

The tone and mood of the novel is one of suspense and intrigue. There is a constant sense of mystery as the family unravels their secrets and deals with the repercussions of their actions. The atmosphere is often dark and intense.

Protagonist: Ernie Cunningham Antagonist: The Sabres (Gang)

The main conflict is that Ernie must uncover the truth behind his family's mysterious past and the events that led to his brother's arrest for murder. Ernie must also contend with his family's complicated dynamics and make difficult decisions about what to do with the money he has in his possession.

The climax of the novel comes when Ernie pieces together the evidence, names the killer and breaks the cycle of murder that has plagued his family. With all the pieces in place, Ernie confronts the killer, whom he believes to be his brother, and realizes that his brother did not commit the murder but instead was framed.

Self-awareness is a form of foreshadowing in itself, signaling to the reader that this is a story that will play around with the conventions of the genre, toying with the reader’s expectations and manipulating our loyalties as it goes along.

“The point is, while Little League would still have been plenty scared to have the gun pointed at him, and my mother obliged him with four broken ribs, she didn’t kill him.” In this sentence, Ernie is using understatement to downplay the severity of the incident. While the gun was pointed at Little League and his mother gave him four broken ribs, she did not kill him.

The allusion is to Ronald Knox's "Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction," which Ernie Cunningham, the narrator, must follow as he uncovers the truth about his family's dark past. The novel is a postmodern take on the traditional detective story, as the narrator is aware of the conventions and rules he must follow to properly solve the mystery.

“Everyone else dispersed to the bar, the restaurant or their rooms. Michael’s arrest had been quite the show for the other guests: there were a lot of greasy-forehead smudges on the front windows. Marcelo guided Audrey upstairs. He had her under his light arm, folded into the wing of his coat, and was talking in a soothing monotone. My mother is not old enough to find stairs an obstacle, but old enough to be good friends with the banister, so they moved slowly.”

The paradox is that Ernie Cunningham, the narrator of the novel, is both working within the conventions of a traditional mystery story, while at the same time attempting to subvert them.

There's a parallelism between the Cunningham family's history of crime and Ernie's investigation of the murders at the lodge, as the two become intertwined.

Synecdoche: The use of the phrase "it's green (metaphorically, at least, because it wasn't all hundreds)" to refer to the money in the bag.

“The bank was very good to Mum, I’ve since learned.”