This is a book about a rape. The victim is a twelve year old girl. There are two rapists. One is a villain while the other is the main hero of the book.

Ms. Bishop's prose is sludgy. Her favourite enunciative verb is 'snarl'. She uses it excessively. Whenever someone speaks quietly, it is always 'too quietly'.

When people are not raping twelve-year-olds - sadistic paedophilia is a constant theme - they interact like characters in a third-rate domestic comedy. It's as if someone had contracted the marquis de Sade to write a full season of 'Bewitched.' Except that de Sade wrote better.