God, Howard is SUCH a good writer. Massively under-rated and misunderstood by many and deserves to be more frequently read. This is her first novel and is extraorindarily good. She has a talent for getting right under the skin of each of her characters so that you really understand their thought processes and who they are. You need to be patient as you read this and enjoy her superb and clear understanding of human psychology. Gradually, a story emerges and you are left contemplating how the personalities of people intersect and grate against each other. How lonely everyone often is and following your own bent causes, inevitably, misery for those you care about. This is about changing behaviour and how hard that is given that people are mostly very fixed. Her sentence construction and her ideas and the actual writing itself is so polished and good. Is it old fashioned? Not really.Something to get your teeth into and really gets you thinking about other people and yourself.
