Structure

The book is not structured like a typical memoir, with a chronological timeline. The action of the memoir moves back and forth with no discernible pattern from the distant past to the present. The memoir opens with Lidia's loss of her baby when she is in her early twenties but then shifts back to her birth, her childhood, and her parents' early lives before returning to present and diving back to the past again.

The author explains that the structure reflects the way we all think about our experiences. We try to make sense of our chaotic memories by imposing language on it, but language is fluid and chaotic, and it does not fully express how we remember of experience events. Lidia explains that the episodes in her life will not be told in sequence, but what provides her life with "chronology" is water. Like language, water...