Reading Response--"The Marriage Cure"

In “The Marriage Cure” by Katherine Boo, the reader is able to learn important bits of character sprinkled in several places as the linear story begins—Corean taking Kim to church. I think this approach was very effective. I learned about her physical description, the place she lives, her old job, and her birth control, that she is in love, and that she wants to go to college. The whole story is just loaded with details like we know the approximate time period of the story because the author mentions the Bush administration. Although I enjoyed the description around Kim during the first part of the narrative the next bit where Corean is described was even more vivid. I also think the small incorporation of dialogue during these introductions is important, it’s not much but what is used really works. I wonder if she meant to use patience twice in the sentence about marriage as a job…When the author gets into the dialogue part of the narrative, at the church, we know the characters (some what) and now we get into the issue of marriage and all the complications around it—the author structures the narrative here in a way that really shows a lot of perspectives, but none explicitly her own. I thought the lack of transitions during the rest of the piece were an interesting style choice. I’m curious how much time this piece took to report.