I really wanted to like this one because it’s been recommended to me so many times. There are some details and moments that are fantastic, but I found the narrator to be too prissy for my taste. And for all the other characters in the stories, the narrator is never able to penetrate any of them—almost as if she lives in a world where others are only there for her to gather more information about herself. I disliked it very much, and it’s probably more to do with an incompatibility with the narrator’s life-view and self-absorption.

—Susan Henderson