Structure

The non-fiction work's structure is complex and serves the narrative purpose of allowing readers to experience the women’s emotions as well as going back into the past tense to provide a background for their actions. While going into the past, however, the additional background about the character's emotions and family connections occasionally allows the characters to be more well-liked as well as revealing more unfavorable aspects of their personalities or past actions.

The work does not always divide into clear boundaries between the past, perhaps showing the inevitable connection between who each of the women is as a mother or a daughter and her own experience with her mother and various disappointing male figures. There is no way to separate the past from the present. The work's structure draws heavily on memory and the role of the past as well as unspoken feelings and thoughts influencing...