Point of View

The Paris Library is told in the first-person point-of-view through the eyes of Odile in the past and Lily in the present. Odile is the main narrator as most of the chapters are focused on her and her experiences are then relayed to Lily through Odile's stories in the present. Her voice is unique compared to Lily's because Odile is older even at the beginning of her tale. We know this because she is looking to start her first job and is old enough to marry, though it is never fully confirmed exactly how old Odile is when the war starts. Regardless, her pattern of speech is very knowledgeable and she frequently uses numbers from the Dewey Decimal System as a link to a specific book that represents the situation she is in. For example, when she thinks about her family's hobbies in an early...