A good number of years ago, I took a community college sign language class with a coworker so we could chat during meetings. It was fun, and more so because some of the others in the class were medical staff at a regional youth detention facility of some sort who specifically wanted to learn some of the “spicier” words so they could know what was being said to/about them by deaf teens and understand descriptions of physical needs. Definitely vocabulary not in the usual intro curriculum.

It helps to think of it very much as Canterbury Tales: a frame story in which a group of pilgrims traveling together have spare time and share their life stories. In this case there’s enough overarching story to make you want to know what happens when they arrive at their destination, but that’s not this novel. It is very much the following ones.