Language and Meaning

The book’s prose is generally clear and direct, without resorting to heightened language or melodrama. The stories portray the characters and their situations in frank terms, exposing both the flaws and virtues of the characters in generally empathetic ways. This empathy extends to the way in which the stories portray the characters’ hardships, as all of the central characters in the stories face troubling difficulties. For example, in the story “In the Old Days,” the emotional climax of the narrative is when the narrator grapples with the loss of having never known her now-deceased father. The narration conveys both the grief and the counterintuitive nature of grieving over someone the narrator never technically knew: “It would have been simpler perhaps, and easier, to cry, to want to cry, to mourn things I had no idea I’d lost, to wonder how I would ever be able to live without him” (60).