This novel is not an easy beach read. It's intense and complex but filled many good, important questions about identity, both personal and national. I really think if you let it enter you--and it's very evocative, filled with scents and sensations and feelings and impressions, it gets under the skin and can be uplifting, mesmerizing. I left it feeling transported into another land and place and time.

It can be a difficult read sometimes but only because it doesn't settle for standard stereotypes and it's very sexual, exploring often taboo areas between mother and daughter and a young woman's authentic yearning to come into her own being.

I loved it.