Point of View

The novel is written from the third person point of view. This third person narrator possesses an omniscient stance throughout the novel. This means that the narrator is able to access many of the characters’ interior worlds and consciousnesses. However, the narrator consistently vacillates between the characters’ lenses over the course of Watching You. For example, in Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4, the narrator is situated in closest proximity to Joey Mullen’s consciousness. As a result of this close psychic distance, the narrator renders the narrative world on the page according to Joey’s perception of it. In Chapter 4, for example, the narrator says that “She scrutinized [Alfie’s] hard, young man’s body. And then she thought of Tom Fitzwilliam’s soft, grown-up body and she wondered what would happen to Alfie’s hard body as the years passed. Would he turn to fat or to...