Home and Belonging

The author employs an unconventional narrative structure in order to enact her protagonists’ lifelong search for home and belonging. The novel is organized into four parts, each of which contains subsections labeled with the characters' names. These subsections are written from the respective characters’ points of view and divided into another series of chapters. The chapters are most often marked with timestamps, indicating when and where the enclosed events take place. For example, Part I: “Daughters”, “Lhamo,” Chapter 1, is told from Lhamo’s point of view and set at the border of Western Tibet and Nepal. “Dolma,” the section which immediately follows, is told from Dolma’s perspective and set in Toronto, Canada in 2012.

Such temporal and spatial jumps drive the narrative from beginning to end and enact the characters’ constant feelings of displacement. This longing for home, for safety and security, originates from...