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The word that springs to mind upon finishing this book is torturous. There is no doubt that this book joins, if not tops, my list of top ten worst works of literary fiction. To be honest, there is an interesting novel in here somewhere, but the voice, the voice is just completely annoying and overshadows everything else in the book. It’s original. It’s just not original in a good way.
Let’s focus on the good for a moment. The central character, Middle Sister, is narrating the tale. Her character is well developed, and the novel has some astute observations on the dangers of false rumors and innuendo. And about fear. In addition, there are several sections about Middle Sister’s mother, and these are wittily rendered. A LOT happens in this book; characters lie, die, and cry; it should have been so much more interesting than it was. The plotline was completely overshadowed by the repetitious, oddly voiced storytelling.
The problem is that is just feels like one long, tedious story about people you don’t care about. It is very repetitive, and these repetitive sections have some poetic rhythms to them which I would have appreciated had they been in much smaller doses. Much, much smaller. Instead, it took me more than a week to read this relatively short novel, and I was seriously trying. I never DNF, but I came so close. The last 20% was an improvement, but not enough to endure the first 80%. All that being said, watch this one win . . .

UPDATE: And now, this book that I absolutely hated has won the 2018 Man Booker. *gag*