The novel is divided into eight sections, each of which is named after one of the first eight books of the Bible (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth.)[6] Each chapter often contains references and allusions to their corresponding book in the Bible.
The novel contains references to numerous literary works, historical figures and aspects of popular culture:
- Jeanette's mother frequently lauds the good and moral behaviour of the titular character in Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.
- Jeanette compares her mother to William Blake.
- Jeanette's great-uncle is described as a stage-actor, who at least once performed as Hamlet to favourable reviews.
- The owner of the local pest-control shop, Mrs. Arkwright, shares the same name with the similarly miserly owner of the local grocery shop in Open All Hours, a popular BBC sitcom that originally ran from 1976 to 1985.
- Jeanette's mother is subscribed to the religious magazine The Plain Truth, which was issued monthly by The Worldwide Church of God from 1934 to 1986. In the novel the family receive a weekly subscription.
- Whilst visiting Jeanette in hospital, Elsie reads "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti, and poems by William Butler Yeats, including 'Lapis Lazuli'.
- Jeanette and her mother see The Ten Commandments, starring Charlton Heston, at the cinema.
- For her Easter-Egg painting competition entry, Jeanette paints her eggs as characters from Wagner's opera-cycle The Ring of the Nibelung, including the Germanic heroine Brunhilda.
- She also creates artworks based on the 1942 film Now, Voyager, and the Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire.
- At her local library, Jeanette reads a version of the French fairy tale Beauty and the Beast.
- Jeannette's mother is shown to be a fan of country and gospel singer Johnny Cash.
- In her new oversized raincoat Jeannette is reminded of seeing The Man in the Iron Mask - although which film version remains unspecified.
- Feelings of misery remind Jeanette of the poet John Keats.
- The short, abstract section entitled 'Deuteronomy' alludes to The Legend of Atlantis, the mythical city of El Dorado, Saint George and the Second World War.
- Later in the novel, a confused Jeanette dreams of a library where a number of young women are shown to be translating the epic Old-English poem Beowulf.
- Toward the close of the novel, Jeanette is depicted on a train reading George Eliot's Middlemarch.
The novel is interspersed with short stories that bear many resemblances to (and draw influences from) traditional Biblical stories of the Old Testament, tales of Arthurian Legend (specifically to Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur) and other popular fairy tales.
