Never mind commas, does she know what a camellia is? "In the flower bed there are some pretty little red and white flowers, you planted them.." (pg290). (Busy Lizzies?) "I'd have planted them all over the place....They are camellias.." (201). "He was stationed... over the …more bed of roses and dwarf camellias.." (pg 85) Must have been tall. Dwarf camellias can be 20'. Maybe the concierge bought a batch of mini dwarf cultivars from the Southern States? No. Would have attracted too much attention. Authorial passmenterie: she needed them to be camellias to thread in her Japanese theme. Also felt, having completed the work, she simply divided it, at times clumsily, between the 2 speakers. The different size print helped. Provocative though: "Art is emotion without desire." (Pg 200) Shall we apply this to the book? It remined me of Mischa Belinski's 'Fieldwork' in that , despite their graces, both are rehashed class notes (less)

OK the Dyalo ritual was central to the Dyalo way of life. It consisted of men traveling to villages other than their own - (not giving anything away here!) -and helping the women plant rice in their own (i.e. the women's own) fields. Yet when the plot requires Martiya to …more XYZ, she travels to a male village and xyz's and helps a male plant rice in his own fields. That's not the system. Where was the other bloke's wife? How many people were planting rice in that her family's fields if her husband hung around? Why wasn't the husband away planting elsewhere. He wasn't young enough to have been single and those rice planting relationships were presented as fixed. Either you have an incontrovertible system or you don't.

On the literary as opposed to literal side, I felt the work reflected current 2-texting interactive multi-media products where art forms have lost their purity. As a novel - though it may have been commissioned, the final draft - that great excursion into Walker history which was a bit of a cheek -would not have seen the light of day - unless it could be marketed on the strength of contacts/connections or using celeb status as a selling point. Suspect the latter as there is a strong element of the Emperor's Clothes in the reviews. In the hands of a novelist/creative writer, this could have been a riveting read. (less)