"I, itch of ink, think of thing, plucked open at her start; no bigger than a capillary, no wiser than a cantaloupe, and quite optimistic about what my life would come to look like. I have since ached along her edges. Delighting in my bare-feet-floorboard-creeps across from where she once would feed, down to where her body brews, I have sampled, splintered, leaked and chewed through tissue, nook, bone, crease and node so much, so well, so tough, now, that the place feels like my own."
Many reviews identify the first-person narrative voice in the book—which is always printed in boldface type—as the voice of the main character’s cancer. And, indeed, in much of its narration—such as this opening paragraph of the novel—its perspective seems limited to those particularities and peculiarities that makes such an interpretation logical—but as the book progresses, the subject contained within the boldface print of the narrative begins to expand. The knowledge this first-person narrative voices expresses ranges from ancient Greek history to anatomical trivia to the name of the actor dancing while he’s “singing in the rain.” The narrative of the novel switches back and forth between the boldface intimacy of the first-person narrative voice and a third-person point of view until they gradually begin to integrate so that are almost seamlessly interconnected on their way toward the revelatory final section of the novel where there is only boldface first-person narrative text.
“Try and survive for as long as you can try and survive for as long as you can try and survive for as long as you try and survive for as long as you can try and survive for as long as you can try and survive you can try and survive”
In addition to the separation of narrative perspective and duties, the structural approach to storytelling in the novel is also experimental in other ways. For instance, at some points words begin to twist into curved shapes or entire sentences crawling upward or downward against the horizontal print. Another example is this excerpt from a handwritten notebook kept by the protagonist. In the book itself it is presented in font that replicates handwriting not just in the typeface but in the uneven appearance of the lines. The last three words of the entry as smudged and more difficult to make out and, notably, stick out from the rest of the entry because typeface has been bolded. This entry in the notebook is written late into the night as Lia is getting closer to sleep. The suggestion, of course, is that just before or just after she finally nods—it could really go either way—the conscious act of writing is briefly taking over by that first-person narrative voice. It is also worth noting that the narration which immediately follows—and which is not in the form of the handwritten font—is the bolded first-person voice. The question that should immediately rise is whether this transition is a rare illumination of the manner in which the first-person narrative arises from Lia’s subconscious or it just mere coincidence that it takes over as Lia falls asleep at night and it is not until the next morning that the third-person narrative voice reappears.
"Lia, bored of the ceiling and her new flat, windless life, took off one early morning while Harry was on the loo. She slid on his distractingly ugly gardening shoes, crept quietly out the door and shuffled off into the waking ancient city.
Oooohhhh I do love a spontaneous outing.
Under the wide basin of blue open sky, Lia felt as if she could breathe again.
The world is our lobster!"
For much of the story, there is no conversational connection between the third-person narration and the first-person narrative voice. The boldface text may exist as a sort of commentary on what the third-person narration is describing, but the separation is more boldly established. As the story progresses, this line becomes blurrier until by the end, of course, it has evaporated entirely. Before reaching that extremity, however, arrives a section of the novel in which the first-person narrative voice takes on a persona that almost comes to feel like a person riffing on a movie. For a brief period, the voice becomes a running commentary working in real-time with the actions being described in the third-person narration. Sometimes the commentary is ironic and sarcastic, sometimes it is explanatory, and at times it even becomes angry that it has no agency over the events it does not like and wishes to change. This transitional section of the book is all too brief as the insight offered into the mind of the first-person voice becomes a highlight of the narrative structure.
