Point of View
Deciding the point of view means working out who is best placed to tell the story.
Someone has to tell us
Who has the best seat in the house? Can we believe anything they tell us?
It is all about perspective
The facts, the truth or just a bunch of lies.
Offred
The Handmaid's Tale — Margaret AtwoodWe know what Offred knows, remembers and chooses to tell us. Her restricted world also restricts the reader's view of it.
Eleanor
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine — Gail HoneymanEleanor tells us what she sees through her own very particular understanding of people and situations. We may understand some things before she does.
Death
The Book Thief — Markus ZusakThe narrator isn't one of the human characters at all. Death watches, comments and even tells us some things before they happen.
Can they describe it, retell it, describe it without any bias or slant?
Change the view, change the story
Experience, belief, religion, upbringing, will all lead to a different story being told.
Girl, Woman, Other
Bernardine EvaristoDifferent lives and perspectives overlap, allowing a shared world to look different depending on whose part of it we are seeing.
Cloud Atlas
David MitchellThe novel moves through different narrators, periods and forms. No single viewpoint gets to own the whole story.
The Poisonwood Bible
Barbara KingsolverA mother and her four daughters recount their experiences in distinct voices, interpreting the same family and events differently.
Just because they saw it doesn't mean they tell us about it..
'That newspaper is years old'.
'She must be lost if she is in this station'.
'I can't let her see my face'.
Three people. Three points of view. Who gets to tell us what they know?