You know, I think LKH has lost the ability to maintain more than one plot at a time/the ability to do sub-plots. She just can't make two issues be going on concurrently. [...] Only when it's entirely finished can the other plot be resumed. A story just can't work like that.

Oh god this explains everything. Especially why we get these repetitive infodumps every time a character enters a room or Anita does something because the moment she's no longer present in that situation it ceases to exist entirely. And also why all this stuff supposedly happens off-screen/completely out of left field, because Anita wasn't there to experience it first-hand and probably got filled in by someone like Claudia or Nathaniel filling her in on what she missed. I know LKH has previously said that Anita is her "camera" on the world, I just didn't think it was quite so literal.