A young starving woman ekes out an existence on the shores of the Greek island of Thera, making a home in a cave and scavenging for food. Initially readers know virtually nothing about why she is there, her background, her past experiences, or even her age, nationality or race. Painfully slowly these bits of information are revealed with dozens of short interspersed flashbacks and introspective, nostalgic musings by the very insecure, lonely, and troubled protagonist. We only learn such details as her age 25 pages from the end. Her parents are constantly providing mental guidance and advice to her long after their violent deaths.
There is really only one character to keep track of, and she eschews any close relationships until the last chapter. The whole story could be seen as a commentary on the universal yearning for close connections versus the opposite common fears of self revelation and intimacy.
Divided into four unnamed parts, more untitled and unnumbered chapters and even more subsections within the chapters, the breaks seem to be placed capriciously, although the story does largely flow forward chronologically over the few months that it covers. No calendar dates are provided but, by the connection to the overthrow of Charles Taylor’s rule of Liberia, it seems to be set in 2003. There is no happy ending or resolution to the woman’s plight. The connection of such insertions as “Beauty or horror, my heart. Turning on a stone. Beauty or horror, it passes.” to the narrative was totally lost to me.
The endless insertion of such phrases with tenuous or no connections to the the accompanying proper sentences seems to be a feature shared by other fiction authors graduating from advanced creative writing schools, but I find this butchery of proper English to be just annoying, although it can be effective if used sparingly. I am slowly learning to avoid the dreamy, flowery fiction written by graduates of the Iowa Writers Workshop. If I remember correctly, I chose this one because of a rave review on the Goodreads website, but I did not enjoy it and cannot recommend it.
The Passionate Reader 