Obreht spent so much time agonizing over wordplay and floaty language that she forgot that the whole point of a novel is to tell a story that makes someone feel. You start off thinking the story is about a young doctor, but nothing happens with her until she starts telling you about her grandfather, so you think the story is about him, but most of his stories are just stories about other people that drag on and on and have no effect on the story at hand, and serve to confuse and exasperate the reader. It is a dull and lifeless but pretty book.