Point of View

Tales from the Café is written from the third person omniscient point of view. This means that the narrator has access to all of the characters consciousnesses. The third person narrator is also a distinct entity who possesses her own opinions and renders the narrative world from an overarching stance. Throughout the novel, the narrator will shift into more sweeping moments of description or musing. In these passages, the narrator often employs the present tense as she makes remarks about the world and human nature at large. The author teaches the reader this facet of his third person narration on the opening page of the novel when the narrator begins musing on the ways in which lying is an unavoidable aspect of human life: “The novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky once wrote, ‘The most difficult thing in life is to live and not lie.’ People lie for...