Adele

I found this novel to be one of the best I've ever read. Her style is haunting, intense, disturbing, yet poetically beautiful. I couldn't put it down. The publishing reviews do not do it justice. Ignore them. This is beyond "crazed dr. gives girl clitoridectomy", what a poor description for this delicious piece of work. This is a story that begins a mystery, yet goes back in snippets of time to explain the past leading up to the current narrative. It is a novel about a creature loved and despised, the historical European references are entrancing, the blatant shocking sexuality is described with graceful sensuality. The characters are full bodied. The novel continues into Alchemical mysteries, archaic references and spiritual goals that tamper with creation, destruction, and gender as we know it. A beautiful, sensual, disturbing, intense novel. Her mastery of words grants her poetic license I have not had the pleasure to read in a long time.... blissful. I have never been so gently or unexpectedly shocked, and then mentally laid to rest with equal ease. I will buy this book to keep on my shelf and read over. Thank You, Mary Flanagan

An excellent maiden effort. I was enthralled by how the author held the reins to the story. Her pace, sense of mood and atmosphere is magnificent. But towards the end, it seems difficult to make the present live up to the past. Looking at things from another angle, we might say the author is trying to convey a sense of how the past was just as twisted in its treatment of sexuality as today's society is.

Skillful narrative, amazing events; hideousness and beauty; attention to sexual (and historical) details, gruesome and original plot. But there's a chilly lack of heart in this novel which all the brains and visual effects in the world can't fix. One of the characters, Blanche, says of her brother, "His eyes revealed more than the usual contempt common to his kind of Englishman (...) pure hatred." Flanagan's meticulous emotionless descriptions almost seem like a form of cruelty.On second thought, is that the point? Puzzling.