This book really comes together in the last bit. Planting suggestions about whom actually authored these books in a post-modern way, which is a reference early on in her career. Lots of references to cyclical structures to progress the plot in an ostensibly linear way. Overt mentions of themes planted in her books, which aren’t these, but also kind of are. The inability to escape patterns in childhood. The responsibility for the things we create. From the minutiae of fiction to child rearing. It really covers a staggering amount of content and impressive draws a through-line from the very first book to now, while managing to be both surprising and inevitable. Such that the characters in their infancy may have been constructed by who she witnesses them to be in the neighbourhood in her maturity.

Fantastic stuff, as always. It does feel like a sudden break into an onslaught of events and content when you reach a certain section, only because it’s a device that I don’t think was used to that extent in previous books. But the acclimation is quick and builds to something poignant. It’s the closest thing to an annoyance I can come up with.