How the Past Shapes the Present

The author employs an unconventional narrative structure in order to enact her main character Nan O’Dea’s fraught relationship with the past. Throughout the novel, the author intersects scenes from Nan’s life in the narrative present with those repressed scenes from her life prior to, during, and immediately following the Great War. All of the chapters titled “Here Lies Sister Mary” depict Nan’s life as a young woman. These chapters appear at regular intervals amidst the chapters labeled “The Disappearance,” each of which depicts Nan’s life in the present. At the start of the novel, Nan says that Archie did not want “to know about [her] past” (9). Because Archie, who is Nan’s most intimate acquaintance in the present, asks her nothing about her past, Nan has little reason to share such details with the reader. Yet...