Point of View

Hillary Mantel tells her collection of short stories, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher, from both the first-person and third-person limited-omniscient perspectives. The limited-omniscient perspective creates an air of suspense and drama for the reader, allowing the reader to know only as much as the narrator, whether first or third-person in nature.

The first and third-person narrative modes themselves vary according to each story. “Sorry to Disturb,” “Comma,”, “Harley Street,” “Offenses Against the Person,” “How Shall I Know You?”, “Terminus,” and “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher” are all told in the first-person narrative.

The short stories “The Long QT,” “Winter Break,” and “The Heart Fails Without Warning” are all told in the third-person perspective. In many short stories, such as “Sorry to Disturb,” “Comma,” and “How Shall I Know You?”, the narrator is never named. In others, such as “Harley Street,” narrators are named in passing...