i feel conflicted about this one. there is awe, admiration at the audacity of 190 pages of dialogue, the craft mastery. how he can develop a character so fully through the confines of that structure. then there is the tedium, the wandering attention. the sense that he is simply echoing and recycling the same themes from 'the passenger' in a different voice - mathematics, existence, reality, unrequited love. i know it's a companion piece and it gives us a specific character portrait, but i'm humbly unconvinced it needed all of that space to do it. there is some movement to the story - <spoiler> the slow momentum of what we know will be her eventual suicide </spoiler> - but it is not enough as a substitute for plot. i guess great writing and philosophical explication can only go so far for me.