Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
Third-Person Omniscient
One Whole and Perfect Day starts off basically like any other young adult novel: with a teenager being generally dissatisfied with her life, social status, parental relationships, appearance, and pretty much anything else you can think of. For the first two chapters, it pretty much goes on like that. But then you hit Chapter 3, and if you're anything like us, we're pretty sure your head started to spin. Then, there's a giant name dump at the beginning of the fourth chapter and we start changing points of view all over the place. What is this madness?
Here's what's up: Third person omniscient narration, where the story takes you into the minds of not just one character, but multiple others as well. It may not be something you've seen a ton of in your reading adventures, but it has a pretty well-grounded basis in literature, from The Lord of the Rings series to Ian McEwan's Atonement to pretty much everything William Faulkner ever wrote.
Think about this: If Clarke had chosen to tell the story only from Lily's point of view, how would the story have been different? Immediately, we lose a lot of things—the conflict between Lonnie and Pop, Lonnie's struggle to find himself, Clara's daddy issues, and so on.
These things might seem like distractions from the main story at first, but they're actually essential to Lily's character development. Without the perspectives of other characters, all we have is Lily trying to manipulate her family so they can have a perfect party for Pop and drooling over Daniel Steadman's picture in the yearbook. No offense to our Lil, but that's not a very interesting read.
So here's the bottom line: While Lily is our protagonist, the story is about more than just her. It's the story of a family that's been wounded and their struggle to heal and forgive, and we need the rest of the characters' stories to understand the complete picture—not just what Lily sees.
While bouncing from one person's head to another may make this a bit more challenging to read, every single character's point of view is necessary. Lonnie sums up the need for a third-person omniscient narrator perfectly: "You simply couldn't tell about people. People were mysterious" (30.27). In the case of the Samsons, the use of multiple viewpoints gives us the information we need to really understand their dynamic and their individual journeys. Without it, we'd have a way different book in our hands.