Having gone to school for psychological counseling for a year, it's a bit inevitable for me to begin noticing the amount of text devoted to internal thought in a novel. The answer is usually: not a lot. With this story, however, Thrity takes the time to bring the reader through the emotional and intellectual debates constantly happening in the two main characters, and in this fashion draws her audience into the story. The way she forces you to chew your path through a number of unpleasant memories and sensations is a kind of tough love not gone unappreciated by this reader.