Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The characters in this book are fascinating, but the prose is a terrible chore to read. The father, for example, talks constantly in baby talk to his kids. Here's a quote: "Now we'll have to work up a schedule. And fustest, you must write to your pore little Sam ebbly week and tell how 'tis tuh hum; and second, you must keep a record of the birds and hanni-miles wot visit Tohoga House..." Maybe you can read that for hundreds of pages, but I can't. I ended up just skipping the passages where the father speaks to his children. Stead's most common strategy for character development is for her characters to give long lectures out loud (either to themselves or to an audience), and these lectures are tedious and repetitive. And finally, if you do get the book, don't read the introduction by Doris Lessing until you're done with the novel. Apparently the publisher decided it was all right to provide an introduction that gives away key events in the story.