Point of View

The Queen of Palmyra is recounted in first-person limited omniscience narration from Florence's point of view. which create an interesting conflict in the narrative. Since she's still a child and views the world through naïve eyes, much of what she witnesses passes under the radar. She opens the novel with the very poignant line, "I need you to understand how ordinary it all was" (p. 1). Because she has grown up in a dysfunctional home, with an alcoholic mother and a violent, racist father, it seems ordinary that her father should receive phone calls in the middle of the night, ordinary that he would take his mysterious box with him, ordinary that Mama would pass letters to the black bootlegger, ordinary that she would drive the car drunk. Florence has been isolated from other children for most of her life, so she has no other lifestyles...