Structure

Overall, the book’s structure is shaped into two sections. The first part of the book, almost half, consists of a series of memoir-essays on different aspects of its central thematic premise – the author’s search for connection in response to feeling a strong sense of both abandon (that is: freedom to explore) and being abandoned (that is: being left alone). The second part of the book, a bit more than half, consists of a single memoir-essay entwining two particular aspects of her search. The first is her experience of being in a somewhat obsessive romantic relationship; the second is her experience of slowly developing a relationship with her birth father and the various aspects of personal and ethno-cultural history she inherited from him.

Within each of these larger sections, the author entwines insights, memories, and narrative in a style that might best be described as a...