Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
First Person (Central Narrator) / Lakshmi
Not only does McCormick write a story about a girl who has been trafficked into prostitution, she writes the story in first person. And she makes it believable (at least to us as outsiders). How is it even possible?
Seriously though—McCormick has a huge task in front of her when she chooses to write in first person. First person is an active style; as the narrator experiences the action of the story, we as readers also experience it. This choice ties us much closer to Lakshmi as we hear her describe objects and machines of the modern world as she encounters them for the first time, and we have to try to puzzle them out along with her. For instance:
And the men carry devices that trill like birds and cause them to shout Hello! Hello! (57.Train.4)
After a moment, we realize she's talking about cellphones. The effect of this first person narration is that we too get to experience our modern world for the first time and react along with Lakshmi—with wonder, with fear.
Not only do we see the world through new eyes, but we are limited to only what Lakshmi knows. And because we are more accustomed to the dangers of the modern world, we recognize that something is wrong with her journey far before she does. We recognize the manipulation of the trafficking train to get her across the border, the destitution of the city she ends up in, and the fact that she doesn't realize the work she will do until she is accosted in the brothel. We want to yell, "Lakshmi! Run!" before she enters the brothel—but we can't.
The point of this first person narration is that our reading of Lakshmi's story becomes infinitely more powerful. We are with her when she is beaten, when she is raped, when she descends into the darkness after her repeated violations. We cheer when she makes a friend, we mourn when Shahanna disappears—in short, her hopes become our hopes, and her fears become our fears.
And this ensures that her story sticks with us far beyond the closing of the cover.