This is a short story inexplicably extended to novel length. The inciting incident was invented to justify a voice that insisted on burying the real story in 90% red herring. I low-key respect it, but in a begrudging way, you know? I didn't enjoy reading this. I just respect it on a metatextual level.

It is paradigmatic literary fiction: a project in character study where voice is the point. There is no structure here, the pacing is drudgery. This is a story couched in rambling, an intertwined series of stories that the narrator tells herself in order to own up to the real story—of her marriage, nested in 200 pages of dreck. It is done this way because the truth is hard to look at. The end is something she spent the book planning for, and something she is only able to turn herself toward because she finally got to the truest heart of her loneliness.

I cannot in good faith recommend this book except to MFA students looking to learn about voice. This book asks readers to waste their time reading five times more words than necessary to tell a story—excess that is not in and of itself entertaining, interesting, or particularly sensible. Read it for the weird experiment, character voice, and fine prose, but not for a good time. It does something, and it's a tragic story. But it's not a holistically good book or even necessarily a story well told.