I am struggling to make up my mind about this.

It's probably not really my thing. It's set in an era that I wouldn't normally be that interested in, it's quite slow and I found myself avoiding picking it up.

But. It's beautifully written, and it's very clever. It's maudlin in tone which is perhaps why I struggled with it. I enjoyed the playfulness of themes of illusion and perspective. The shifts and mirages he creates with language are lovely, the slippages in meaning of the same words in different ways.

It probably deserves more than a 3, I'll say 3.5 but only because I'm probably too dim to understand what he's doing. I never did get on with the novels that tinker with language.