comment on structure

Alarcón's collection consists of ten short stories. Some are very short (one is as brief as three pages) and others are much longer -- the collection's final story, "The Auroras," is of the pace and length of a novella, containing its own miniature chapters. Most stories unfold in chronological order, although a few make frequent use of flashbacks. "The Auroras," for example, regularly alternates between the story's action and Hernán's reflections on his former life in the capital, where he taught at the university and was married with a stepson. Similarly, "Abraham Lincoln Has Been Shot" uses a similar rotation between the story's action and the narrator's memories of his first love, Lincoln. One story, "The Provinicials," also contains a significant structural disruption, when the format of the story's text abruptly shifts to a dramatic playscript -- and just as abruptly returns to conventional prose.