Hi. This is Charlie.

“Once in a Lifetime” feels very intimate. The most obvious thing that does this is the use of second person, which makes it feel like a long letter or address, and also puts a strong focus on Kaushik. This focus not only takes attention away from his mother, which adds to the shock at the end, but it also makes the narrator seem much more like a little girl, obsessed with a mysterious crush who lives in her home and has taken over her life.

In addition, the sentence structure is really compelling, combining similar ideas into sentences and paragraphs, using long sentences with many clauses to pull along the reader and make the writing seems like free-flowing thought. Lines like “I imagined you slipping on the shingles, falling into the shrubbery, my being blamed for the accident, for standing by stupidly as you did such a brazen thing” (493) pull the reader into the narrator’s thoughts, allowing the reader to follow the narrator’s thoughts with the flow and ease with which she thinks.  

Also, I love how the detailed descriptions and references draw the reader into the narrator’s world. The narrator gives descriptions of how the visitors look from their old photos and and when they first arrive, showing the reader how they look from her curious young gaze. She also gives detailed little snapshots, especially of things related to Kaushik, like “the toes of your thin bare feet hooked around the edges of the coffee table” (499), showing the reader how important those images are to her. In addition, she adds references to the world around her, like mentioning specific town names, movies, books, papers, and supermarkets to create a better sense of the world in which she lives.