I bought and read Nightwood after reading heady reviews by T.S. Eliot and Jeanette Winterson - both of whom offer their thoughts and impressions in the Preface and Introduction respectively. I also read that it was essential reading for anyone interested in the over-indulgent 1920s in Paris and the USA. Both Winterson and Eliot refer to a second (or third) reading of this book being essential and maybe I will again one day, but the first reading has peculiarly left me just as impressed as I am disappointed.

While there are lessons to be learned (about today's society as much as yesterday's) on every page, their medium is often a little waffling and off-topic. I found myself craving "action" in a way I don't usually when a book is this well written. And when the action came it was more often than not delivered by other people (Nora and the doctor) in rambling late night conversations shrouded in unrelated but almost relevant lengthy metaphors and digressions.

There is no doubt in my mind that Barnes was a literary revolutionary of her time and her bang-on-target character assassinations are expert to a fault (one went on for three pages!); I also adore how intelligently and unapologetically she wrote a story about a lesbian love triangle in the 1920s and yet the book was never banned and was only gently censored by the author prior to it being published in its full version in 1955. There is also much to be learned in this book from a story-telling perspective, as the woman at the focus of all the tragic attention - Robin Vote - never takes on the form of main narrator.

I look forward to my second reading...