Po-Mo Slims

She manages to pack an astonishing amount of strong stuff between the covers of this little book: death, widowhood, childlessness, despair, hatred. There’s straight narrative, dramatic monologue, even letters to a ghost. One suspects de Souza is a compulsive e-mail writer, one who needs to communicate each new idea immediately to someone out there. Sadly, the book lacks a strong core, a quiet centre that can hold the reader in its coils. It’s a quality that makes slimmer books than this novels in a truer sense. This is at best an e-mail wanting to be a novel when it grows up.