Freeman's narrator muscles her way (one suspects the narrator is female) into the tale, coloring it with too much foreshadowing, not trusting the details of the story to speak for themselves.
When the narrator tells the story in first person, but details in the story lead the reader to suspect that the narrator is not reliable, the result is irony.
The narrator suspects a drug deal.
The narrator suspects that in twenty years he will still be able to trace their journey backward, from torched tree to torched tree, to where they first saw the elk, then lost him, then found him again, and killed him.
Worse, the narrator begins to suspect that Ridley, who helps care for the elderly, is killing her patients, and may plan to kill her own mother.
But the novel is narrated by Chris Carver, who is nothing if not ordinary, and I suspect that Kunzru is using his narrator to sink the reader into the unaesthetic here and now.
First, there is the question of the narrator, who if she's not unreliable in some way is suspect.
Our narrator, alerted to "the past's play of dark and sunlight," begins to suspect that having a sense of family history may not be as enviable as she had thought.
When the narrator is finally approached by someone who claims to know about "the woman you are looking for," we suspect a possible scam.
