What is the author's style in I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier?

The most challenging element of I Am the Cheese is its three-part structure. Three separate threads, or strands, run side by side through the novel, and there is no omniscient narrator or author's note to explain the connections between them. First-time readers must be patient and allow the separate pieces to sort themselves out.

This complicated structure (which Cormier himself assumed was too complex for young readers to follow) serves at least two functions in the novel. Adam is given three separate voices: the present-tense first-person narrator voice, the voice on the tapes, and his voice in dialogue during the past-tense sections. These three voices are a testament to Adam's insanity: in his own mind, the three voices speak in turn, out of his control. He cannot control his own thoughts, his own memories. He has forgotten his identity. The three narratives also place the reader at a disadvantage. Like the Farmers, the reader is constantly off balance, unsure what to trust. This is Cormier's message, as spoken by the old man with the map: "Don't trust anybody." As the reader picks her way through the three narratives, she gathers clues and tries to interpret them, but she is frequently deceived. The structure of the novel echoes the structure of modern society: disjointed, deceptive, and beyond individual control.