Katinka's such a beautifully unreliable narrator, is the thing -- not out of any intent to deceive or any possession of incorrect facts, it's just that you can't trust her perception of things for a single second! "My god!" she'll think, leaping to a conclusion with the force of profound epiphany, and two pages later we learn that the epiphany had precisely no relevance or relation to reality whatsoever. It's absolutely incredible!