The book intersperses segments of an ostensibly realistic narrative of the lives of Anna and her friend, Molly Jacobs as well as their children, ex-husbands and lovers—entitled "Free Women"—with excerpts from Anna's four notebooks, coloured black (of Anna's experience in Southern Rhodesia, before and during World War II, which inspired her own best-selling novel), red (of her experience as a member of the Communist Party), yellow (an ongoing novel that is being written based on the painful ending of Anna's own love affair), and blue (Anna's personal journal where she records her memories, dreams, and emotional life).