Bought for my NSSH&CAS partner.

Sending to my NSS partner

Thanks very much Scoobydoo ( and whoever may have helped you) for a lovely haloween themed parcel, this book looks great and I will look forward to reading it.

This was a difficult book to get a handle on in many ways. I did enjoy it, although I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to, or as much as I did the Golden Child - which was the last Penelope Fitzgerald I read. I'm not sure what her "point" would be if there was one. I can't believe that it's just a story about a crumbling Italian family, with their bizarre history of dwarfism and mutilation, nor about a pair of rather ill matched lovers. Penelope Fitzgerald feels like one of those authors that must be making some point - and that the story is just a means to it - with this novel I don't know what that point is. One review I read suggets that it is that life seldom turns out as you might expect - hmm not sure that isn't too simple. The characters, I found, were difficult to care about - in fact I'm not sure I did at all - with the exception of Barney the marvelous English friend, the characters are a bit flat - which added to my feeling that they were merely showing us (the reader) something more. But what ever that might be I obviously didn't get it. I was relieved to see - by looking at Amazon that i am not the only one who hasn't "got it" which makes me feel a bit better.

If you have found this book, thank you for taking the time to look it up on the internet. Now please tell us what you thought of the book and what your plans for it are.