comment on style

The language of the novel is somewhat simplistic. This makes Willa’s journey easy to understand for every reader. There is very little vocabulary that cannot be understood without context clues. This is beneficial for the narrative as the whole because Willa is not an inherently complicated woman. She is someone who goes through most of her adult life with the decisions of others and not much of her own. The most symbolic part of the novel happens after Willa chooses to go back to Baltimore. She imagines “herself as a tiny skirted figure like a silhouette on a ladies’ room door, skimming the curve of the earth as it sails through space” (292). This shift in narrative style at the very end of the novel is representative of the change in Willa’s view on life. Now, instead of seeing the world for what it is, she sees the endless possibilities awaiting her with Cheryl and Denise in Baltimore.