I can't honestly say that I enjoyed this book, though I did gobble it down, fascinated, within a few hours. It was rather like watching a morbid, horrifying train wreck, as Mary is ground down (and actively grinds down the people around her) in her obedience to expected social, sexual, and above all racial behaviour.

It is brutally, deeply, hideously observant. As much slow horror as literary fiction, I reckon.