Structure

The Dragons, the Giant, The Women is a structurally complex book. It is composed of five different sections, titled “Rainy Season,” “Dry Season,” “Aside: When the Therapist Suggests I Begin Dating Again,” “Rainy Season,” and “Dry Season,” respectively. The repetition of the rainy and dry seasons in the titles shows a cyclicality in the overall structure of the book, where Moore jumps from one to the other of the two seasons Liberia has and going through that cycle two full times. Whereas this might suggest two full years of narrative progress, in fact the book spans decades. The titles rather emphasize a natural, seasonal cyclicality in a broader sense, and also mirror the emotional cyclicality experienced by the author, Moore, who leaves and returns to Liberia.

Each section mentioned above is also divided into several chapters, with the chapters each progressing in chronological order within those sections...