I enjoyed this, but I feel in some ways that I should have liked it more than I did. It's made up, after all, of elements that I love - an interesting structure, books, the story of a monster, hidden family secrets, that lovely mysterious Gothic sense of undermining. And the prose is very smooth, which I always appreciate. But countering that is the fact that it's so long, which wouldn't matter if it kept me riveted... but it didn't. There were places it dragged, to be honest, though I'm less sure that it's a flaw in the book rather than my own impatience with lengthy stories that's caused the dragging. The rambling, gentle prose is certainly conducive to a dreaming, drawn-out kind of nostalgia, but suitable as it all was, I can't help but think the book might have lost a third of its page count and not suffered for it. Also, the ending was all a bit too interconnectedly neat if you ask me.