The book appears at first glance to be undecided about its genre or raison d’être: is it a novel or an essay? Does it wish to tell a story or discuss/debate women’s issues? Being an award-winning book notwithstanding, this disconnect stays with the reader throughout the book. As one attempts to read the story, one is constantly distracted by the meta-fictional sub-text that runs across the bottom of the pages. This, to my mind, takes away from the impact of the story itself—this marrying together of a fictional enterprise and a critical treatise on the status of women. Another problem is that these comments are pretty much disjointed and do not flow coherently in a seamless account, nor are they always a commentary on what is being said in the fiction. So why have them there?
August 2015, volume 39, No 8