Inventing Memory is something of a postmodern collage or pastiche of various writing techniques. The story is revealed through multiple points of view, including a representation of a tape-recorded first-person narration created by Sarah Levitsky for her absent great-granddaughter Sara, personal letters (some of which were never mailed), especially between Sarah and Salome, journals kept by Salome in Paris and later in New England, an unpublished magazine interview with Sally, poems, an erotic fantasy sent by Salome to a lover, newspaper clippings and reviews of Salome's books, an excerpt from the rough draft of Salome's lost novel, and an old-fashioned thirdperson omniscient narrator to deliver the story of Sara at the opening and closing of the novel.

The oral history Sarah creates is flavored with the Yiddish that was her native tongue, and the reader gets a vivid picture of the immigrants' world through Sarah's eyes. Since she...