I just noticed that this is her first novel. I wish I had known that when I started to read it. The novel is very uneven, there are some wonderful moments in the book, and sometimes the language, or a phrase, or a description are stunning, but overall the book falls apart. As a short story this could have been interesting. Actually as a short story this could have been really good, in a Raymond Carver way. There are parts of a characters action that can be accepted in a short story which need to be fleshed out in a novel, and she doesn't do this. The book isn't sparse enough to reach the interesting levels that Carver can achieve with a few choice phrases, but it's also not in depth enough to give any motivation to the drastic choices the characters make. But there is enough description given to the internal state of the characters, but nothing that the reader is necessarily given leads to what the characters do. I guess it's not psychological enough? I don't know what I think it should have been more of. I think rather it would have been more interesting if this had been a bit colder of a book, where the reader could fill in the inner life of the characters from the action going on, instead of feeling kind of lost in the choices being made because none of them really feel right.
