It's one of them fancy postmodern collage novels, made up of hundreds of well polished, sundered fragments, scenes, observations, and episodes, told from the point of view of a well bred, well salaried journalist living in 1970s New York City. It's a little intriguing, at first, wondering how this might come together, watching it build a unique, half-lidded tension between coyness and overexposure, at times feeling seduced and at times feeling repulsed by the rhythmic, metered style, annoyed and excited by its nagging, neurotic inscrutabilities, often in the same beat. And then some time around page 100 something snapped and I just started reading the rest of it as fast as I could, just so I could get it over with, having grown deathly tired of whatever game this book is playing, almost solely just to spite the distant, somewhat patrician way it's speaking to me, toying with me. Is this more style than substance, you begin to wonder? Not that there isn't any substance—the disparate images, altogether, give you some insight into what cavorting around town as a privileged, well educated, highly observant white woman must feel like—but is there enough substance here to justify any concentration, any focused investment? Call me ignorant, but I just don't get the sense, that no, there is enough.* Two stars.

*Rachel Cusk would do pretty much the same thing but much more effectively in her Outline trilogy nearly 40 years later. Honestly, if I hadn't read Outline first I probably would have admired this one more.