And so it goes on: the pairing of Lila and Elena continues to defy the narrator’s and the reader’s understanding. So many possible interpretations of their relationship are proffered and then fall away: it’s always something else that explains their interest in each other, which is variously dominated by love, by hatred, by suspicion, by need, by anger, by longing, and by everything else, so that the reader is just as fraught by the relationship as Elena, the narrator, is. Both women are grown up now and have arrived at what appears to be established identities, yet the sands continue to shift, and the reader is surprised again and again by the permutations of this relationship and the twists and turns of either character, both worthy of the attentions of another large novel written by an intelligent writer with a deft way with characterisation and story telling.
Mr A
