Narrator and point of view

Mai Nardone’s short story “Only You Farang Are So Easy to Come and Leave” is a first person-narration. The narrator is Lara, the main character in the story.

Because the story is Lara’s account, the narrative only follows her point of view on the events: “I was fourteen and in love with a boy who 10 had ears like cymbals” (ll. 9-10). The things we get to know about other characters are limited to what Lara knows or finds out: “ ‘The Thai-Chinese are all like this,’ Dad said expertly. ‘They make walls. They like to live in little boxes.’ Ma, part Chinese herself, allowed him this transgression.” (ll. 7-8); “Ma nodded, satisfied with this transaction, and left the room.” (l. 44)

The narrator’s reliability is questionable because she is biased in her relationship with her parents and because she admits to lying. Because she likes her father more, Lara does not tell her mother when he is lying: “Ma asked, ‘Where you come from?...