Memory and the Past

Throughout the novel, the author deforms linear time in order to enact Eszter’s complex relationship with her memories and her past. Although Eszter’s lover has died some time prior to the narrative present, Eszter does not present her story in an orderly, temporal fashion. Rather, throughout her stream of consciousness account, her mind wanders between the past and the present. Indeed, experiences, events, scenes, and observations from her present life continuously tug her mind to various eras from her former life.

By structuring Eszter’s account in this manner, the author captures and conveys her first person narrator’s attempt to disassociate from her past. Eszter’s avoidant tendencies are a learned defense mechanism. In Chapter 16, while Eszter reflects upon her relationship with the lover and the lover’s absence from her life, she begins to realize how little he understood...