Legalistic and Distant; Descriptive and Lyrical
The novel is written in part as a demonstration of evidence. The boys present all of the artifacts they have collected as "exhibits", as though they were in a court of law. For example, they present a photograph of the Lisbon house to the reader: "Exhibit #1 shows the Lisbon house shortly before Cecilia's suicide attempt" (1.4). In cataloguing their exhibits and reporting the evidence they obtain from interviews with doctors or reading the medical records, the writing style is clinical and dry.
This contrasts starkly with the style of most of the novel, which has been described by many reviewers as dreamlike, poetic, and incantatory—almost invoking a spell to cast on the reader. This style is used when the author is describing the boys' fantasies, or their speculation about the Lisbon sisters' inner world. The last paragraph of the novel is a great example:
It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together. (5.42)
Shmoop's opinion of the author's writing style? Gorgeous.