I think the reason I liked this so much was, in no small part, down to listening to it. The narration was excellent and I accidentally set it to a faster pace than I thought, while driving and so couldn’t change it, and it gave it a quick, breathless quality. Whereas the prose I think would have been much more subdued and quiet on the page, is my guess.

It felt like fairly rapid, mostly vignettes, given the size of it (4 hours in length, so probably novella-esk size?) of a woman’s childhood with her parents, extended family, and school-social bubble. The people in her life are truly Very Cold People, so that was apt. But I found the kind of innocuous, fairly granular aspects to her daily life and the general focus on her mother being… quite the character.

It’s short, punchy, fantastic with specificity and diction—the way to my heart. Fantastic authorial voice, or perhaps the narration augmented it? I find it difficult to discern the difference between prose/voice and narrator performance when it’s very good, and this was very much that. But the language being fitting and excellent is indisputable, I think. Great ending, effective reveal.

Just very “enjoyable”, as sad, depressing reads go, really.