Comment on structure

The plot of Another Brooklyn is mostly linear, even as the structure of the novel as a whole is fragmented and impressionistic. The plot begins with the adult August, who then tells the story of her childhood in Brooklyn in a prolonged flashback. Once she begins telling the story of her childhood, she does not return to the present moment of the narrative. We see the younger August go from eight years old to beyond graduate school, but the final scene of the novel is her at 16, the moment her family returns to her childhood home in Tennessee. Within each chapter, August might visit other moments in her childhood (usually times from before they lived in Brooklyn), but in general, the overall events of the story move in a fairly chronological order once the flashback begins.