Tough book to rate, here. When it drags, it really drags, but when it moves, it zips. Sometimes the frame story premise of being a written memoir is almost obnoxiously intrusive, other times it melds with the story so fluidly that you can't image it told any other way.

I liked it, though. It's all about a privileged, rich, sheltered white girl in the world's biggest city on the cusp of war, and the rebuilding after, but it doesn't revel in either the privilege, the judgment, or the inevitable comeuppance: It's acknowledged, it's accepted for what it was, and it moves on. It acknowledges a lot of other lives, and it moves on. That kind of slice of life gave it extra power for me.

Whether you love it, you hate it, or you tolerate is depends entirely on how listening to a stranger tell you their life story for six hours sounds to you.