Biscia Female, 35. Pisa, Italy

A beautiful book, though I have some trepidation about using the word "beautiful" to describe a novel that makes you never want to fall in love--or have anyone fall in love with you--again.

I wouldn't call it cruel or grim, any more than a mirror is cruel or grim when it surprises you with a reflection that bears no resemblance, none, to the image you crafted of yourself. Or worse, with the gaze of someone who has caught you in the act of trying out an expression for their benefit. It's a book not so much about dreams betrayed as dreams misdreamed, doomed from the start because they rely on the notion that other people will behave like the shadow puppets of your imagination, whereas other people tend to be terribly three-dimensional, ripping through the screen, refusing to mouth back the words you scripted for them. Each of the characters is left aghast by the pitiful, inevitable gap between reality and fantasy, and in their flailing attempts to tweak and tug first one and then the other into some congruous shape, they do violence to both. And without being particularly blind or stupid; I'd venture it's pretty hard for any honest reader to come out feeling superior. In part because Yates is there cradling it all like a pietà.

By the bye, I think this is a very feminist novel.