Great novel - compulsive, unsettling, tragicomic - even if I am getting a bit tired of the unreliable narrator device.

But it's such a well done Unreliable Narrator, isn't it? I love that novel.

Ah, but all narrator's are unreliable - if they're supposed to be human! Good novel though (but possibly not a great one).

A
xxx

<Added>

Um, that would be narrators. Sorry, it's been a hell of a day.

A
xxx

I don't mind an unreliable narrator; I just wished this one hadn't smacked me repeatedly on the head with a dead fish and worn a sign saying 'LOOK HOW UNRELIABLE I AM'. Otherwise I found the book quite enjoyable, though.

I hear there's going to be a film with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett. Ought to be good...

Fredegonde - the author did draw a lot of attention to her unreliable-ness, didn't she? But I don't think Heller had much of a choice once she'd decided to tell that particular story from Barbara's POV. And I thought part of the point was to mirror Barbara's 'fictionalising' of the story with her own delusions about her relationship with Sheba.

Lammi - part of the problem was that she was such a well done narrator. She was so well drawn that I found it difficult to believe that she would be so careless at the end - unless she intended to, of course. I wasn't taken in by Barbara's reasons for writing the 'novel within a novel' - why did Heller do that instead of a straight first person?

HollyB - the beginning and ending clunked a bit but I thought the middle was brilliant. I still think it was a great novel, though not a Great one.