The novel is told in the first person by the narrator, Elaine Risley. All of the events in the novel are told from her point of view, although the perspective within that point of view shifts considerably—from the young child just discovering the world, to the young woman coming of age, to the middle-aged painter coming to terms with being fifty.
Each of the novel's fifteen parts is named after one of Risley's paintings. The title of the painting is a clue to what happens in the section named after it. In the section entitled "Wringer," for example, which takes its name from Risley's observations of the wringer washing machine in her childhood home, Risley experiences the cruelty of her friends for the first time. She is metaphorically "put through.....
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