The high-pitched tonal uniformity of this raw nerved outpouring is fortunately slim in pages (just 112 in my edition) but it's verging on being overweight when it comes to fabulous imagery. I found my copy in a street library. Whoever had previously read it had some kind of religious obsession and had heavily (urgently) underlined (in pencil) any conceivable reference to anything biblical, god, angels, martyrdom, and flowers. This meant that most pages bore marks but then books can bear that and, if anything, it enhanced my reading. I wondered what I would have made of the book if I knew nothing of Elizabeth Smart's life or had not read the foreword by Brigid Brophy. Nevertheless, there were many wonderful moments. For example,

Parent's imaginations build frameworks out of their own hopes and regrets into which children seldom grow, but instead , contrary as trees, grow sideways out of the architecture, blown by a fatal wind their parents never envisaged.

( )

I liked the flowery prose and the indirect writing style but generally I think this book is overrated. Not enough of a plot to really know what it was about, but it was also short, which is also a plus. ( )

Hmmm.... so this starts with what i thought was someone planning a murder, an interesting but wrong assumption as it was just an allegory for sleeping with someones husband. On the other hand while the mistaken premise was good the writing was some of the worst stuff i’ve ever read.

I mean it was truly terrible writing with just an absurd amount of mixed metaphors piled on top of one another. I really didn’t think the novel/poem/whatever could recover from my disappointment at the discovery of the actual plot combined with that writing.

However it does improve. Its still quite fragmentary but overall you get a fair understanding of whats happening. The writing is certainly better overall than the openng portions although there are still odd metaphors here and there.
Later it actually felt like they were purposefuly bad at times, maybe a bile filled sarcasm but i definitely felt some sort of dark humour in places.

Overall the almost 18th century, romantic, overemotional, emo, melodrama combining with the modern settings and vocabulary do create something of interest. Still.. a very low 3 stars. ( )

No es una novela. No es un poema. Es una mezcla de ambas cosas. Es rara. Pero podríamos describirla como una biografía contada sobre la base de un montón de citas literarias, unas poéticas otras teatrales, que a su vez le confieren una lírica llena de humor a veces. ( )

Over a year to read this slim book. She lays her heart so bare that I could only read this in moments of emotional calm. A tribute to the writing is that I could leave it by the bedside for months and then pick up and read on as if I had laid it down only the night before.

Have 'read' it a second time as an audio book. ( )