To begin with, I want to say that this book may have gone completely over my head. The clues are all there; the writing is good, the subject matters thoughtfully considered, and the author seems to be executing her plan.... and yet, I can't quite put my finger on what that plan was trying to accomplish.

Obviously, on the surface, this book is about a woman living alone in a cottage in the countryside, delving deeply into the social terrors of dealing with other people and the value of tomato paste in turns. Early on, there is a section describing a Japanese tapestry (or a painting? some art piece), with subtle gold lines that hint at a more complex picture, letting the viewer fill in the gaps on their own without all the extra details. 'Ok', I thought to myself, 'this is the author telling us that these interior vignettes are the subtle hints that help us fill in this lady's life without being overly explicit.'

For most of the book, for me, that thought seemed to hold up - and for that part, I found the book more or less enjoyable. At other times, though, the author seemed to start to fall in love with the smart person's thesaurus, on many occasions it seemed like sentences were overwritten and overly complicated - I struggled to keep focus on reading and it took several weeks of off-and-on sessions to get through.

The breaking point for me came in the last third of the book - and again, I want to stress I could just be completely missing things - where I was convinced either the author or I had just suffered a massive stroke. A passage about impromptu gardening transitions suddenly into a kind of impressionistic, surreal, quasi-poem.. followed by a section where I was no longer sure if the narrator had died and was now haunting the cottage and having conversations with the moon (?) and yet sending texts to her friends (??). I suppose this could be the whole point; that after living by herself so long, she herself isn't sure if she's died or not ... I don't know, I could have used another clue or something.

Anyway, I am sure there are people out there that would really enjoy this book, and I certainly didn't dislike it - I just never quite connected to it on whatever level it was trying for.