Point of View

Helen Simonson tells her novel The Summer Before the War in the third-person omniscient perspective for a variety of reasons. First, there are a host of distinct, individual characters, each with his or her own inclinations, beliefs, ideas, circumstances, desires, and courses in life. The third-person narrator allows the reader unique access into the lives of each of these characters while relying on the narrator as a common, linking strand between distinct people. Secondly, the novel itself takes place across multiple places, from marsh canals to towns to mansions to cities to battlefields The third-person narrator, here, as with the characters, acts as a common, unifying strand between these places. Additionally, the novel itself, which broadly revolves around the lives and places of these people in the summer before, and during the first year of, World War I, necessarily therein involves multiple subplots and courses...