Narrator and point of view

The short story “Tomorrow Is Too Far” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is told in the second-person by a character-narrator. The narrator talks about herself and the events she recounts in the second-person. This suggests detachment from herself while at the same time trying to make readers empathize with her situation:

It was the last summer you spent in Nigeria, the summer before your parents’ divorce, before your mother swore you would never again set foot in Nigeria to see your father’s family, especially not Grandmama. You remember the heat of that summer clearly, even now, eighteen years later… (p. 24, ll. 1-4)

The main events are told in retrospect, as they happened 18 years prior to the time of the narration. But although the narrator knows the end of her childhood story—“It was the summer Nonso died.” (p. 25, l. 24)—she has limited know...