Voice & Tone

Voice
The author's voice can be considered informal though not in the sense Bitter Medicine is filled with profanities and short hand syntax.The sentences are often curt, direct to their point in what they wish to convey. The author rarely derails his train of thought and the moments he tries to paraphrase or make connections through examples he quickly re-links the briefly detached thought back to the memoir's main flow. Clem certainly reflects his life's events in the memoir, and of course the life of his brothers Ben and Olivier, but such is done in a casual, approachable, manner meant to be an accessible recount of past events rather than creating a great deal more meaning from what occurred.

Tone
Clem Martini's tone is that of someone who is immensely tired, it seems. The events told in Bitter Medicine were stressful for the entire family. This is reflected in the short, direct, responses mentioned in the Voice section. Where short sentences can be used to simply convey knowledge Clem Martini uses these in conjunction with Olivier Martini's drawings to convey just how much these event wear at the family. Instead of long winded, run-on, sentences Clem's more accurately mirror how one might retell this story to another verbally. Bitter Medicine can almost be read as a script for an interview rather than a more traditional novel.