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Reading this book is like slipping into a lucid dream; the prose is so lush, bordering and often crossing into poetic, and the images in the novel so striking; a scene where the main character is in her studio surrounded by flower parts comes to mind as one of many that will linger.

This story is elliptical and indirect; at times I wasn’t sure if I was in the past or the present, and with the ending, I’m not entirely sure of what happened; I can see a couple of possible outcomes and don’t have surety of any of them.

None of that detracts from the beauty of this book, though; if anything, the ambiguity enhances the dream-like experience.

This is an important exploration of women in modern times; even with supportive, loving husbands/partners, how much (invisible) work still defaults to women, and how women’s desires are often ignored or suppressed, how women who do not wish to have children are viewed as aberrant.

This book is only 200 pages and I read it one sitting without meaning to; I really could not put down. I wish it had been 200 more.