content: There are numerous delightful aspects to this novel, especially the attention to historical detail and the ingenious "whisperings" in the margins.Unfortunately, Goldberg has added so many different strands that the ultimate work doesn't hang together well. There are too many different story lines, and as a result I found myself ignoring one that later proved relevant, and distracting by the irrelevant story of QD Soda. It was unfortunate, because the central themes, the story of Lydia Wickett in 1917-18, the Gallups Island experiment, and the role of memory and history, were all wonderful. They just got buried under the weight of all the other strands. If QD Soda had been edited out, one might have been able to appreciate the newspaper articles and other tidbits; as it was, it became an overly busy patchwork, hard to appreciate much of anything.