Genre
A collection of short stories
Setting and Context
The majority of the stories take place in New York or its suburbs in 1970s.
Narrator and Point of View
The author gives preference to the unreliable narrator and the third-person point of view.
Tone and Mood
The tone is contemplative while the mood is depressing.
Protagonist and Antagonist
A typical protagonist is a thirty/forty-year-old woman with the complicated past and an uncertain future. Antagonists differ, more often than not it is a man either relative or partner.
Major Conflict
Major conflicts are person vs. self and person vs. person. For instance, Lili Rose from "Curly Red," Nedra from "Happiness," the woman from "The Girl with the Blackened Eye" have inner conflicts.
Climax
I’ll call Mario.
When Lili Rose decides to call her brother she has been avoiding for many years, the climax of the story happens. (from "Curly Red"
Foreshadowing
Normally a guarded woman, she’d given in to impulse. (from "In Hiding")
Understatement
Like a cat, spayed. So it can’t have kittens. The truth is that Lili Rose and her mother don’t talk about a cat, it is about a girl who was gang raped and two of ten abusers were Lili Rose’s brothers. (from "Curly Red")
Allusions
One of the stories alludes to the Vietnam War.
Imagery
See imagery section
Paradox
You are there, and not there. (from "The Girl with the Blackened Eye")
Parallelism
What goes around comes around. (from "Curly Red")
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The sole breadwinner. (A breadwinner is metonymy for a person who earns the money.) (from "Mrs. Halifax and Rickie Swann: Ballad")
The girl, Liza Deaver, was fifteen, with thick glasses. (Glasses are synecdoche for spectacles.) (from "Curly Red")
Personification
N/A
