After this plunge into the thick of a chaotic situation, the novel’s patterns crystallize slowly. The numerous ‘triangulated relationships’ and shifting alliances among Chang’s large ensemble cast establish the triangle as the emblematic shape for the book’s many subplots. These small stories do not really cohere into a major plot or crescendo into a climax. Instead, they spread out horizontally, in interwoven narrative vignettes and mini-scenes, connected by Julie’s free associations. Rather than flowing forward in big waves, the narrative spreads out in rings of ripples, swirling around fragments of reality—‘a bit of time in the pure state’, in Proust’s words. Memory, then, provides the governing logic, with the confusion and complexity of life rendered as experience rather than as story. Chang not only resorts to remembrance for her source material but calibrates the narrative form to imitate the patterns of memory: radial rather than linear, elliptical rather than coherent. At the same time, there is a grain of feminist salt: the narrative voice, especially in its use of free indirect style, sees the world from a young woman’s point of view. Chang, as author, reaches deep into her experience of life and recalls it from within. History, in Little Reunions, is represented through an intensified female consciousness.