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Title: More of a disappointment than a dream...
Review: After reading some of the overblown reviews, which reference feminism, self-discovery, and the crossover between literature and love, I was expecting something along the lines of A.S. Byatt's "Possession." Instead, this book was the depressing tale of a woman who is unable to say no to dreary and squalid sex (at one point her elderly lover takes out his dentures to take her to bliss) and the historic/tragic love affair she is researching is even less interesting. The protagonist has the inner life of a blank page and the dead woman she identifies with is equally tepid. Her flashbacks to a difficult childhood are supposed to illuminate her distance from the world and those inhabiting it. Instead, they seem to be an oversimplified and awkward technique that takes the reader back to a past where our heroine is as featureless and unexplained as she is in the present. I hate to be harsh, but I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.
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