After that I stopped remembering and tried forgetting instead.
-- Narrator/Gretel (One: "Beyond the Black Stump": "The Hunt")

Importance: Gretel says this in the narrative present of the novel when thinking about memories of her mother. After Sarah abandons her when she is just 16, Gretel spends much of her adulthood attempting to decipher those images of her childhood she can remember. Because Gretel finds herself unsure if the memories or true or invented, she decides to abandon them altogether. Though this moment shows Gretel's seeming resolve to create a life and identity independent of Sarah, the narrative to come proves otherwise. Forgetting, the author suggests, is not so decisive and clean an act as Gretel initially believes.

At times you interrupt and our two tellings cluster together, overlap.
-- Narrator/Gretel (One: "Beyond the Black Stump": "The Cottage")

Importance: After finding Sarah again, Gretel attempts to reconstruct her childhood through storied retelling. In this moment she realizes the ways in which her stories both connect and compete with her own. This...