An extraordinary portrait of the female soul under the conditions of 20th-century misogyny ... Consistently luxurious ... Elaine is the very model of an unlikable narrator; she’s degraded and her company often feels degrading. But she’s also witty and exhilaratingly blunt, and her darkest opinions are often right on the money.
To inhabit the libidinal consciousness of one’s own mother is an inherently awkward undertaking ... It is a compassionate if somewhat flip portrait, and by the time we reach its sad denouement the reader has only sympathy—and not just for poor Elaine. Lurking in the text as young Billy, who gazes out at us like some reproachful Freudian ghost, Will Self has written his own origin story.
A sensitive study ... The housewife in question is based on Mr. Self’s mother—a fragmentary photograph of her appears on the cover—and the elements of the story have been gleaned from diaries he found after her death. If this extraordinary invasion of privacy doesn’t put readers off, they’ll find a vivid depiction of a mind in turmoil ... The uniform desperation of Elaine’s emotions becomes quickly suffocating. Mr. Self has extracted from his mother’s diaries a person entirely defined by her longings and neuroses, less a character than a stereotypical postwar case study.
As both writer and personality, he has never wanted for confidence or a fancy prose style ... For Self to turn to autofiction now, one might assume that Elaine can be read in part as a critique of the category itself; whichever genre he tackles, Self always goes in with both boots ... Little in the way of plot ... A full-blooded Nabokovian relish for the possibilities of the sentence, the phrase, the word. This is not just Self’s idea of fun, it is his modus operandi.
The book’s greatest offences...are not sexual but stylistic. Self’s maximalism has not aged well ... Self’s fiction occasionally arrives at characterisation by way of accretion, but Elaine’s interiority never quite coalesces.
An intense and claustrophobic portrait of an intense and claustrophobic world. Self’s later-career stylistic mannerisms are in full effect ... There aren’t many laughs, either. It’s a slog. And those looking for direct, real-life gossip should be warned that it diverges substantially from the historical record. But some of the set-pieces...have real force ... Much to admire.
The digressive, at times rambling, prose that’s long been common for Self is present, but there’s no question that his chosen subject has focused his mind. A striking study of a woman on the verge.
