MixedThe Sydney Morning HeraldLaura van den Berg is gifted at creating psychologically complex characters; her observations of the world are deeply poetic ... The carefully constructed environment of the hospital created a tension that seemed to be building towards a delicious climax, but outside the novel\'s dramatic machinery falters ... At times it feels here as though there is too much, and van den Berg struggles to keep a handle on everything. Memory and identity are such rich themes; what I wanted was for van den Berg to extract meaning from these potent ideas she offers us in the first few pages ... In the end, it\'s as though as readers we are suffering from a mysterious illness ourselves: intoxicated and confused by van den Berg\'s broken world, but not immune to its beauty.
