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 By the end of the novel, do you get used to Alvarez’s style? Why did she choose
this style? Does it work? Is she able to get you to finish reading the book even
though you know the ending? What does she focus on instead and why?

At first this book was very hard to understand because I felt as though it was a bit scattered with it's ideas, thoughts and especially characters. Her writing was easy to understand after the first few pages of Dede's "third person" monologue because it started to unravel the meaning behind the story.... her sisters' death. After reading Dede's chapter, reading the other girls voices became a little harder because it was a new narrator and new writing. I love how Julia Alvarez can be so versatile in her writing by taking each of the characters voice. Alvarez's style worked out perfectly after I read through the first four chapters. It was much easier to determine the four sisters from each other.

I'd like to believe that Alvarez used this style to help the reader get a better sense of each girl and the actual events that took place and how each girl reacted and perceived them. For example, there is a huge difference between perceptions of life according to their experiences; the youngest sister, Maria Theresa and the oldest, Patria are prime examples of this. After Patrias husband Jamito left her because she had met with the revolutionary priest, she was devastated. "That first day was the hardest. I was crazy with grief, all right. When Dede and Tono walked me into the house, all I wanted to do was lie down and die...I got up from my bed ready to set up housekeeping at Mama's" Here, Patria is distressed and knows the hardships of life, but still takes on the "daily grind" When Maria Theresa describes the hard ships of being locked away, she describes her devastation in a different way, a less mature way describing how she's uncomfortable. "After you lose your fear, the hardest thing here is the lack of beauty. There's no music to listen to, no good smells, ever, nothing pretty to look at." She's more concerned about material things and believes if she doesn't feel comfortable, the "world will end" where Patria has had something horrible happen to her and still moves on with life. With this difference of character, you can imagine how many “sides” of the story there are.

Although I knew the ending to this story, Alvarez keeps you hooked with the different characters. I was never bored reading this book because for every chapter, there was a different voice, it's as if I knew the sisters as well as if they were my own. Every sister told a different version of the suspense and as I read on, the story replayed in a different perspective, which is what helped this book to be so successful.