The question of the form of Lives of Girls and Women remains an ongoing critical concern. On the one hand, its structure exhibits a number of the centralizing elements of a novel: a single although never singularly authoritative narrative voice, a character who can be considered central to the events, a common setting and a relatively stable cast of characters, and an implied chronology that traces the growth of Del Jordan from childhood through adolescence. Critics who forward this formal distinction inevitably feel it necessary, however, to attach a modifier to their claim, describing the book variously as an autobiographical, episodic, "loose," or open-form novel.

On the other hand, many of the elements of the book suggest that it can be read as a story cycle, that is, eight linked stories which can be published or read separately but which also invite an attentive reader to construct and...