"Dispossessed" Linear versus Non-Linear Storytelling **Spoilers Allowed**

[stormhawk]

I don't know if The Dispossessed is correctly identified as "non-linear." Perhaps "parallel" is a better descriptive term, since the two threads of the story, the past and the present are woven together, each moving forward, but each piece told alongside the other, switching back and forth in time to build the characters and stories.

Would the novel have been as strong had it been composed first as the story of Annares, and then the story of an Annaresti on Urras?

[Mawgojzeta]

I am a big fan of this type of book set up. I find it invigorating, for lack of a better word.

Now I am not completely finished but....

I do not think it would have been as strong of a book if written in order. I will qualify that by saying I think it would have still been a good book.

[Richard]

stormhawk wrote: "I don't know if The Dispossessed is correctly identified as "non-linear." Perhaps "parallel" is a better descriptive term..."

I think your choice of "Parallel" is quite good. I consider the book to be fairly linear, in that the two threads are linear, the Annares thread thread being the history to the Urras thread.
My opinion is that the structure is very effective, leading you back and forth through time, hinting at answers to questions as they form. I found the story quite dry as it was, a straight linear telling from start to finish would, for me, be too much and probably stop me from finishing the book. The two interweaving threads allowed my short attention span and poor memory to contrast the two planets and societies while the pictures are still clear in my mind.