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Old 11-15-2018, 07:12 AM   #5
Bookpossum
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Posts: 10,146
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Device: iPad Mini, Kobo Touch
In summary, I quite enjoyed it (I gave it 3.5 stars on Goodreads) but I thought it was too long. I also found the whole side story of Dr Jordan got to be too intrusive when I was wanting to concentrate on Grace, though I can see it was there to point up the idea of being manipulated into doing something you don't want to do, and that for a man, compared with a girl of 16.

Grace definitely fitted the "unreliable narrator" theme very well. She was remarkably eloquent and had an extraordinary memory for all sorts of details - or did she? Early on, she comments to herself about Dr Jordan:

Quote:
He's playing a guessing game, like Dr Bannerling at the Asylum. There is always a right answer, which is right because it is the one they want, and you can tell by their faces whether you have guessed what it is; although with Dr Bannerling all of the answers were wrong. (Chapter 5.)
I thought this assessment by Grace of the various people who said they want to help her was spot on:

Quote:
Help is what they offer but gratitude is what they want, they roll around in it like cats in the catnip. (Chapter 5.)
One thing I wasn't expecting from the book was the amount of humour in it. The observations about the various characters can be really very funny, whether we are sharing Grace's thoughts, or are hearing from the narrator.
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