Turns out this is not my sort of book at all and I only finished it because it was short. I picked it up because it's one of those classics that I knew the title of but had no idea what lay between the covers. It is written in 'lyrical' prose, which is to say, very flowery with multiple references to classical writing. I spent half the book wondering what the whole thing was about because my mind was either wandering or I was skim-reading and consequently missed a lot of the drift. Once I did cotton on that it was about a young woman having an affair with a married man, I lost all sympathy for her because a man who is prepared to cheat on his wife is not worth any amount of purple prose. The novel was inspired by Elizabeth Smart's own affair with the British poet George Barker, and maybe she felt she had to write it in order to explain her own actions. Barker does not seem to be much of prize, but she stayed with him for eighteen years (although they ...