The novel's narrative voice weaves readers into the group story. An authorial "I" speaks directly to readers as "you" and also includes them as fellow women in a conspiratorial "we." By the book's end it becomes clear that the "I" who narrates — and who walks alone on the New England beach at the beginning — has the same life history as the protagonist whose story she tells.

The blending of names suggests not only "Mira" and "Marilyn" but also, through "mirror," the reader who sees her own story in the shared women's voices.

The form of The Women's Room replicates women's experience with its circularity, repetition, and grinding accumulation of daily detail. There is no tidy plot of cause, effect and consequence; any story may be interrupted by quarreling children or a hungry husband. Friends come and go because of divorce, changes in...