This is far and away one of my favourite books. Shields toes a delicate line I’d never imagined before between autobiography and fiction, tracing the life of a girl (eventually a woman, of course) named Daisy, and uses her hopes and stumbles and desperate quiet struggles to show us the power of the unfulfilled life and the silent allowances we make for our inadequacies.

A very good book, not surprising for a Pulitzer Prize-winner. I was a little put off by the mixture of personal and omniscient voice in the earlier chapters. Ultimately, though, I was charmed by Daisy Goodwill and this fragmented story of her life, made all the better by the author’s willingness to present the book as 10 distinct chapters rather than an unbroken tale.