What is the author's style in Eva by Peter Dickinson?

The narrative is written from the third person, past tense point of view, focusing on the experiences, attitudes and perspectives of protagonist Eva. Characters and situations are viewed and/or interpreted from the starting point of her perceptions - what she sees and hears, and later as she becomes more attuned to her animal instincts, what she intuits. In other words, the narrator is not omniscient (i.e. knowing, and able to comment on the internal life of all the characters) but limited (i.e. knowing, and able to comment on only one). A particularly valuable and/or engaging aspect of this limited point of view is the way it draws the reader thoroughly into Eva's experience, drawing the reader intimately into it. This is specially effective in the first section, "Waking," in which the reader essentially discovers the truth about Eva's post-transplant situation at the same time as she does. As the narrative progresses, the sense of potential connection and/or identification between protagonist and Eva becomes somewhat more distant and less intimate, perhaps a result of the generally matter-of-fact and understated language in which the story is told (see "Language and Meaning," below). But, because the connection between reader and character is so strongly and so thoroughly established in the first few sections, in spite of the narrative language being somewhat cool the reader is still likely to feel a sense of empathy for and with Eva's passions, regrets, confusions, angers, and ultimately, her peace.