Point of View

Frederik Backman tells his novella And Every Morning The Way Home Gets Longer and Longer in the third-person limited-omniscient perspective from the point of view of Backman, who doubles as an unidentified narrator. Backman explains early on the novella is his way of sorting through his feelings regarding aging and memory loss not only for himself, but for his own children. As such, Backman follows the aging and memory loss of Grandpa, and the struggles of his son and his grandson to handle the situation. The third-person narrative mode allows readers to be present throughout the novel, from memory to present-day reality to a mixture of the two as Grandpa’s memory blurs, and the past and present comingle. The limited-omniscient aspect of the narrative also serves to demonstrate the difficulty Grandpa has in distinguishing past from present, place and reality and memory, as readers...