Narrator and point of view

The short story “Her Share of Sorrow” by Tessa Hadley is a third-person narration. The narrator is anonymous (he does not reveal his identity) and functions as a close observer of Ruby and her family.

The third-person narrator seems to have an unlimited knowledge regarding the characters and to view the family through a bird’s eye perspective. For instance, he knows that Ruby laments in her room while Dalia laments in hers:

Ruby wailed at the ceiling, her small mouth stretched open in an ugly shape, her face hot-pink. – What am I supposed to do? she lamented. – There’s nothing for me to do in this house!
– But she isn’t interested in anything! Dalia, also lamenting, wailed to her husband. – She doesn’t draw, she doesn’t read, she doesn’t play imaginative games. (ll. 16-20)

At the same time, he knows that Adrian and Nico are on their bikes away, that Dalia is in the garden and that Ruby is bored because she has no internet:

Adrian and Nico hired bikes and were out all day. Dalia needed desperately to unwind and leave her clients behind; she took her book out into the garden, (...) – bracing herself for conflict with Ruby, who couldn’t live without Wi-Fi and hated the sun. She came out scowling into the brightness, stomping her feet in her jelly shoes. (ll. 26-30)

Besides the bird’s eye ...