This is a sort of coming-of-age novel, except that the protagonist is in his seventies. So maybe it's a going-of-age novel. Throughout his life, Harold's inner voice, his thinking voice, has occured in words. One day, he loses his inner voice, or rather, it becomes an outer voice. He can't think without words, and he can't do it silently. When this first happens, he finds himself in the emergency room a couple of times after accidentaly insulting people. As the novel goes on, with the help of a therapist and an internet porn site, he explores his identity, his sense of self, his hopes and dreams. I wonder why there aren't more novels on the subject of existential crises featuring older characters. There is quite a bit of expicit sex stuff, but none of it is actually erotic, in fact the the sex stuff is almost bureaucratic (and it's in all caps, which is terribly annoying). I think I had put the sequel to this, Angelica Lost and Found, on my to-read list after reading a review in the TLS, and if I remember correctly, the review suggested that one could skip Angelica's Grotto and go straight to the more interesting sequel. But the library didn't have the sequel, and they had this one, so I figured I might as well, since it had an interesting premise. Probably not for everyone.
