Style of writing

Long and short sentences alternate throughout the text, creating a flowing reading rhythm. Even the first sentence of the novel is a long nested sentence followed by a short sentence: "THE WEEK BEFORE I left my family and Florida and the rest of my minor life to go to boarding school in Alabama, my mother insisted on throwing me a going-away party. To say that I had low expectations would be to underestimate the matter dramatically.  (p. 9).

Parataxis and hypotaxis (see Literary devices) are used alternately, creating variation in the narrative: "We grabbed Takumi and walked down to the lake, hiding behind a few trees, laughing." (p. 53).

Hypotactic sentence structure is frequently used in the narrators' accounts. The paratactic form is to express the...