time

In this text, the author does not especify exactly in which period of time hapens the action. It does not say any concret year, or day. In the text we find some pararel stories, and each one ocurs in a diferent periode of time. The main one, is the party in Broadthrows home, in Woodside, California. Jenny only says that it's September when the party was about to begin. Latter she says she was working for the Broadthrows family as a babysiter for two weeks. In another page, Janny said she had supper last week at Jack and Jane new home in Sunnyvaley. As we can see, all that happend in September, in a few weeks of difference. The moment that is considered the "present" for Jenny, is the party at Broadthrows home. The time spent in that scene may be a night.
She also have dreams, in some of them she invent places and situations, but in others, she remember a past time, with her family, or with her ex-boyfriend, David, but she does not especify when that happend. All that, in File1.

In File2, the action hapens in a restaurant in a Hotel, where they were celebrating Tom's birthday. But that is not the real present for Jenny because she says it hapend a week before. So her real present is a week after Tom's birthday. In her real present she is at a coffe where she met Jeff and she make a date with him for next monday.
In another page she said it had been two weeks since the party in Woodside, so it must be over October or last days of September.
Jenny was writing on her notebook a trip she made last year with David. We only know about that travel that it was one Monday in the middle of July of last year.
As we can see, the author don't give any concrete date about the present of Jenny.

In File3, in one of the scenes, Jenny sais it was a a sunny December Sunday afternoon in Woodside. In another scene, Uncle Roger gives Jenny a present, it was a round trip ticket to Boston. On December 23rd, they flew home together. The last time reference we can found in the text, is when Jenny was at her work in San Francisco, in January.
So the last part of the novel takes place between December and January.

So after analyzing the three parts, we get the concusion that the whole action hapens from lasts days of August, or first days of September, untill January of next year. In file1 Jenny was at Woodside in a party at Broadthrow's home which take place in September.
In file2 we advances about txo weeks in time, so it must be last days of September or first days of October.

And finally, in File3, the last time reference we have is of January, so we suppose that it is still January when Jenny went home with her mother.

The tense of the verbs in the text, is normally the past simple because she talks about thing that had already hapen. There are moment in which she uses the present, usually when she make a presentation or have a conversation with someone. The author also uses the past perfect when talks about past finished expiriences of Jenny.

Another aspect I want to coment here is the time I have spent reading it. The text is not very long, File1 has 74 pages, File2 has 74, and File3 only 58. The text could be read by cliking on the links, or following a lineal structure. At firt, I tried toread it using the links, but I get very confused and I waist a lo tot of time. Finally I read it in a lineal way and I find it much easier to read, and I only spend a couple of hours.