It is well written and Lewis perverts a standard literary device in a clever fashion. At the first the novel appears to begin with a framing device -- A young bed-ridden neighbor narrates how Monica finds a pretext to stay at her house and in conversation, Monica starts to relate her history. But Lewis does something unusual--rather than just using it as an excuse for the story, he intersperses Monica's memories of what happened with the story told to the neighbor. Lewis thus prsents a double image of the past, showing the reader both what Monica is and what she believes herself to be. Then the evening is over; Monica returns home, becomes the narrator of her story in real-time, and the neighbor is not mentioned again. Unfortunately, even with such an intriguing opening structure, the novel seemed somewhat flat to me. ( )