 A Japanese review in the Yomiuri Shimbun noted " something inaccessible about all three [ characters ... who are ] as remote to each other as they [ are ] to the reader , and thus are never truly empathetic " . The review in The New York Times by literary critic Michiko Kakutani called it " an elegant , unnerving novel " but that Bock " tries too hard to underscore those links by using leitmotifs to connect his characters ' experiences " . In London , the review in The Sunday Telegraph was more critical , finding it " is badly let down by its form , a split @-@ time @-@ scale narrative ... [ and ] is significantly short of narrative dynamism " , while novelist Amanda Craig concludes that it " reads as the work of a young writer who is straining with too much effort " . 
