Fisher, unfortunately, has very little to say that is truly original. She therefore deploys linguistic camouflage--mostly awkward contrivances. But even that can't relieve the tedium. Suzanne Vale's disintegration is so predictable that it's almost laughable: medication-pointless sex-nervous breakdown-overdose-clinic and, ultimately, resurrection and salvation Hollywood-style. You can almost hear the chorus. But even that doesn't work. Like the rest of the book, it remains arid and ferociously tiresome. This is a book that exhausts you because Fisher just tries too hard for too much. She tries to make her heroine not herself and to make both her heroine and herself likable. It doesn't work. It's just words, words, words being flung at you, as I said, over-punctuated and often redundant. This is like being had by Hannibal and his elephants. At the end, frankly, my dears, we really don't give a damn.

Even apart from the sheer narcissim and self-obsession of the entire narrative, there's something more fundamentally objectionable about Fisher's projected take on life and what makes it worth living. Vale's collapse is triggered by one thing and one thing only — her husband abandoning her for another man. What follows is an odyssey of self-discovery to prove one thing and one thing only — that Vale is actually appealing to the male of the species. This is reinforced by the awkward ending. Vale's self-image and persona are, according to Fisher, inherently and totally dependent on how she is viewed by the men in her life. Somehow, this is not just silly and plain wrong, but coming from someone like Fisher, quite unacceptable. I don't buy into the theory that women need men to be 'fulfilled' or 'complete'. At its heart, and despite all the posturing (and that's all that it is), Fisher's book is horribly misogynistic.

Unless you're a real glutton for literary punishment, or you're seriously starved of good reading matter — and you've got to be marooned on some island — don't bother. Or, as Fisher might say ... don't--bother ...

Incidentally, a somewhat gentler and very accomplished review appeared in the Guardian/Observer.

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