Point of View

The novel is written from a third person point of view. Because Penny is the main character of Nicotine, the third person narrator follows her internal and external experiences most closely, often inhabiting her headspace and adopting her thoughts and feelings. One example appears early in the text, when Penny is sitting by her father's hospital bed. After Penny makes a comment to Norm about his condition, the narrator says she "feels how sharp her tone is. She wants to be gentle. She wants to feel close to him. But she is trapped in an emotional paradox" (13). In this passage, the third person narrator shifts inside Penny's mind and spirit in order to explicate the vulnerable truth of her emotional experience. The narrator, however, does not only inhabit Penny's perspective. In the opening sections of the novel, for example, the narrator details several scenes in...