What is the narrator point of view in the novel, Love and Other Thought Experiments?

The chapters "An Ant," "Game Changer," "Sunbed," Clementinum," "The Goldilocks Zone," "Arthulysses," "New to Myself," and "Love" are written from a close third person point of view. At times this narrative voice possesses a free indirect capability, moving into the intimate thoughts and feelings of multiple characters in a chapter. At other times, this narrator remains close behind the consciousness of a single character. In "An Ant," for example, the narrative stance shifts back and forth between Eliza and Rachel's psyches. By way of contrast, in "Sunbed," the narrator adopts the feelings and thoughts of Elizabeth Pryce alone. The malleability of this point of view allows the narrator to inhabit each character's distinct vantage and experience. The narrator also links all of the characters together, and acts as a seemingly omniscient link between them.

The chapters "Ameising" and "Zeus," on the other hand, are written from the first person points of view of the ant and Arthur's OS system, Zeus. In these sections, the narrative voice assumes a more authoritative tone, and understanding of the narrative world. In both chapters, the first person narrator adopts a direct address via the second person. For example, at the start of "Ameising," the ant says: "Introducing myself to you this way though, through a meeting of minds as it were, will allow you to understand the very great change in my circumstances" (84). Here the narrator seems to address the reader and the characters in the novel at once. The ant establishes a relationship with her audience through a measured syntactic cadence, thus creating a familiarity between reader and speaker. This voice returns in "Zeus." The narrator begins by saying: "You are reading. At least, this is what approximates to the experience of reading, as closely as I can render it" (204). Again the narrator seems to break the fourth wall and address the reader in a metafictional manner. As the chapter continues, the reader realizes Zeus is also speaking to Arthur, and is in fact the ant herself. The author creates this connection by employing the same tonal register as the narrator in "Ameising," allowing the reader to perceive a connection between the ant and Zeus before the narrator makes the link explicit.