He argues that the book's hallmarks are its restraint, brevity and readability, which downplays the extravagant and mythical aspects of the disaster and instead puts in the foreground the stories of the people on the ship. The narrative builds suspense, making the reader care about the characters and revisit the disaster from their perspective.[7] It tells the story in a highly visual and aural way, describing the sights and sounds of the night of the disaster "with the immediacy of a live broadcast or a television documentary", as Biel puts it.[5]