As with the Peyton Place books, Metalious uses flashbacks or capsule histories to develop her characters and to move the story along. Unlike her previous novels, however, there is very little plot line on which to hang these minibiographies. They become the story itself. It is an interesting idea and allows the past to become an increasingly important theme in the novel. The flashbacks create a drifting feeling as the reader fades back and forth between past and present. It also allows the reader to clearly see the connections between past and present and to understand the hold the past has on the everyday lives of the characters.