Bookshops & Bonedust

Frames, windows, and mirrors highlight the importance of one’s point of view. At various times throughout the novel, the characters each acknowledge the importance and limitations of perspective. Maylee puts it in these terms when she explains her attraction to Viv: “I love what I do, love it every day, but none of us sees more than a tiny piece of all the world, like we’re lookin’ out a little-bitty window” (130). For Maylee, Viv’s arrival has offered a perspective shift—she revisits memories of when she was a mercenary and looks to the world beyond Murk.

Viv emphasizes the importance of objectivity. Fern is frustrated by her inability to see what needs to be done to the bookstore, but Viv tells her that maybe she needs someone from the outside, like Viv, to help her “reframe it.” Fern also understands the power of perspective, particularly in the context of literature. When Fern and Viv discuss Heart’s Blade, Viv wonders how the characters can do nothing but fight and then flip to a romantic relationship. Fern points out that their initial antagonism doesn’t exactly turn into something else so much as shift in meaning.