La Reina de las Nieves was published in 1994 although, as Martín Gaite indicates in her ‘nota preliminar’, it started as a project at the end of the 1970s. Although she sets the narration in the 1970s, many of the problems referring to Spanish youth became more acute in the following decade, and the length of time and the difficulties that Martín Gaite encountered during the years of preparation for this novel make it a complex piece of work. The four chapters which constitute the first part of the novel are structured in a way which makes it difficult for the reader to instantly understand the relationship between the main characters. In fact, the two main characters do not meet until page 320, and their relationship is not clear until page 299. However, the author gives hints throughout that first part that suggest their paths will cross sometime in the future.

The novel is divided into three parts. The first and third parts consist of four chapters each and are recounted by an extradiegetic narrator. The second part, written in diary form, is ‘taken’ from the ‘cuadernos de Leonardo’, the work's protagonist. Leonardo starts writing these notebooks after his parents' death, a time when he feels he needs to make sense of his past to understand his present circumstances.