content: Considering the awards it won, this should be a great book, but I found it very unengaging. The author sets up any number of interesting subplots (son of H is about to wed daughter of M, his arch enemy; K gets cheated out of inheriting a valuable painting by her deceased friend's family) but all these conflicts somehow just evaporate. Considering that the first 200 pages of the book are the setup, and the second 200 are one expectation after another thwarted on the part of the reader, this makes for very disappointing reading. Add to that that every character manages to lose our sympathy the second they gain it (K and C seem to become friends, even though every single recorded conversation contains snubs and misunderstandings) and I had the hardest figuring why I should care about any of them.