The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness, and Murder

Often referred to as perspective, point of view is the angle through which a story is told. It dictates how much information a reader gets and from what source, influencing what a reader knows regarding the narrative. In The Good Nurse, Graeber uses the third-person limited point of view. This means that the biography is told using third-person perspective (with “she” and “he” pronouns that make the book feel like watching a movie), but rather than providing a broad, overarching understanding of all events, it focuses on the perspective of individual figures, conveying an intimate understanding of what they know or don’t know. For example, when the narrative is focused on Charlie, the narrative reveals only his thoughts and feelings. This format creates dramatic tension, especially for a mystery such as this, because readers quickly learn that Charlie is a murderer. The mystery then becomes how he’s caught rather than the crime itself.