Narrator and point of view

“No Angel” by Bernie McGill is a first-person narration, told from the perspective of one of the characters, an Irish woman named Annie.

The narrator only presents her limited perspective on the events: what she sees, what she feels, and what she knows or finds out: “The first time I saw my father after he died, I was in the shower, hair plastered with conditioner, when the water stuttered and turned cold.” (ll. 1-2)

She does not know what the other characters do and think, unless they reveal it to her. For instance, when she is frightened by a presence or noise in the coal house, she assumes it is the spirit of her dead father. However, at the end, it turns out it was the spirit of her dead brother: “Robbie, in an over-sized bow tie, with his...