The memoir is narrated from the child's point of view in a convincing voice that develops as she grows. Within this framework are short sections written from an adult perspective. Now a parent of young children, Clare considers how her upbringing impinges on her relationship with them. In order to understand her father's behaviour, she researches military training and its effects on the psyche of soldiers, and interviews Vietnam veterans. Although these adult sections provide important information, they also contain overblown imagery and interrupt the flow of the main story.

In Enemy, Clare learns to understand the father she both loved and hated, but the more compelling story is of her own journey towards self-knowledge, from a child whose self-belief and trust in the world is worn away to an adult averting the legacy of war continuing into the next generation.