Point of View

Ali Smith tells her novel Autumn from the first-person omniscient perspective from the point of view of an unknown narrator. Though the narrator is never named, but can clearly be seen to be a stand-in for Smith herself, the narrator personally address the reader as though the reader is an intimate acquaintance. The reader gains, through the narrator, a bird’s eye view of everything in the novel, both past and present; dream, memory, and reality; and is even privileged to learn forgotten events, conversations, and occurrences that are nevertheless crucial to the lives of Elisabeth and Daniel. The reader is therein given unfettered access to truth as truth is –whereas not even the characters of the novels have such luxury, though they themselves are in pursuit of these truths.

The first-person omniscient perspective point of view underscores the major theme of truth in the...