Was very enthusiastic about this in the early stages of reading, but 475 pages later I see it as verbose and somewhat self-indulgent. The work of a by-then-highly(over?)-acclaimed author. Many individual paragraphs are exemplary, but it could have done with some serious editing IMHO.
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Lucrecia Mantel is a sophisticated filmmaker worth watching. The Holy Girl is well up to the standard of The Swamp. Her obscurity is a little too much though in The Headless Woman.
Sounds interesting. The cover picture, Fernand Léger's Le mécanicien, is very familiar. I bought a postcard of it in Paris in the 50s (groan, groan) and still often display it on my bookshelf.