Lush and descriptive, but not as much as I wanted it to be. Also, the pull between Vianne and the priest in the town was, while interesting, disconcerting. I ended up feeling like because they were so polarized that neither was reliable as a narrator. The "true" story was probably somewhere in between. Curious to see how it compares to the movie, though. (Yes, I've seen it, but it's been forever and I don't remember.)