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here's a confession:

if i voted for your review of this book before today, i had not fucking read it. oops, sorry! (upon quickfast, sherlockian investigation, i now know that only means two of you - and i read the first half of both of them before, i swear, and have now read them in their entireties) but i didn't want anything spoilt for me. i didn't want to know if the book was triumphant or devastating or funny or tragic or philosophical or melodramatic. i wanted the tone to be surprising, i wanted to avoid preconceived notions.

and hurrah - i got what i wanted.

now i am considering your feelings. do i think you (collective, anonymous) would benefit from a similar experience? do i dare presume?

i do, but...

but i will discuss it in what i hope will be an oblique way. if you don't know the plot of this book by now, after all the hype and acclaim, you have yourself probably been living in an 11x11 room held captive by a bad man. despite its being told entirely in the voice of an extremely sheltered five-year-old boy, it is more a meditation on motherhood and necessity and where the separation occurs between mother and child; what is the act that cleaves mother from child and allows each to lead their own individual lives? and where is the line between protection and deprivation? and what can be done with unwanted eggshells?

this book is excellent.

but i don't want to get too caught up in possible rooners. i myself want you to be like nell, all pure and speaking your own bizarre stroke-language, not knowing anything about the greater world, where this book exists. in this scenario, i am the baaaad man.

and i am okay with that.