Genre
Contemporary, short story collection
Setting and Context
Modern-day United States
Narrator and Point of View
The point of view alternates depending on the story: some stories are in a first-person limited point of view, while others are in a third-person limited perspective.
Tone and Mood
Serious, emotional, contemplative
Protagonist and Antagonist
Most of the stories' protagonists are women who have been hurt by broken relationships of some kind or another. The main antagonists are the people who hurt them; or, on a larger spectrum, the qualities of human nature that encourage restlessness and hostility.
Major Conflict
In "Escapes," the major conflict is Caryn's attempt to deal with her niece Jennifer, a fourteen-year-old girl who looks like a model and has problems with stealing and self-harm. Caryn must try to understand Jennifer and earn her trust, doing her best to influence her for the better.
Climax
At the end of "Escapes," Caryn tells Jennifer the truth about her father: that he was a drug dealer who hung himself while in prison. This finally brings the two together, and the story closes with an image of them walking up the steps to a cruise ship, arm-in-arm.
Foreshadowing
There is literal foreshadowing in the story "The Language of Sorrow:" teenage Peter is forced to visit his grandmother, Dora, while his girlfriend is giving birth to their child. There is immediately a gap between the two due to Peter's perception of Dora as merely a boring old woman, symbolized in the story by a shadow on the ground between the two, described as a bridge. This image foreshadows Dora's crossing of the bridge and reconciliation with Peter, and the two of them become strong friends.
Understatement
“'He gets up on Sunday mornings and preaches to people, doesn’t he?' ... Today is Sunday, and when he got up with her this morning he was definitely not preaching.” ("Total Cave Darkness")
Allusions
Being set in the real world, stories includes many allusions to people, places, and things; for example, "Total Cave Darkness" alone contains references to Readers' Digests, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Mel Gibson, Cosmopolitan, and even Paul Revere and the Raiders.
Imagery
In "The Rightness of Things," Rachel temporarily gets with a man named Harry, a shorter guy who has the appearance and demeanor of a rooster, "strutting" around and generally behaving in an arrogant, birdlike way. Rachel privately calls him a rooster in her mind, and the image is apt: he likes to be the man among women and assert dominance despite his self-aggrandizing strut.
Paradox
The protagonists of "Joelle's Mother" see Joelle as the epitome of high-class perfection; as it turns out, however, despite her beauty and wealth, Joelle is never satisfied and rarely happy, as opposed to the contended familial love shared by the protagonists' family.
Parallelism
The sexual secrets Marjorie keeps in "New People" have a direct and more disgusting parallel: her husband has his own secrets, but his are far more perverted.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
“...she begins to pull fireworks from the shelves around her, until she settles on a Roman candle and a box of sparklers.” ("Total Cave Darkness")
Personification
“She settled on the Weather Channel and watched the heat spread across the country, relentless.” ("Total Cave Darkness")
