268
people found this helpful, as of 2023
ranked #102,135 most helpful
out of 571,544,897 reviews
★★★★★
What this book is about, and how it works:
The reviews and comments I've seen have in various ways missed the point of the book, identified in its title. On page 239 of this 249-page novel, she notes that when people describe themselves (the book consists almost entirely of these), they are describing what the listener is not. "This anti-description...had made something clear to her by a reverse kind of exposition: while he talked she began to see herself as a shape, an outline, with all the detail filled in around it while the shape itself remained blank. Yet this shape, even while its content remained unknown, gave her for the first time since the incident a sense of who she now was." The book consists in ten conversations with people about themselves, interrogated by the Narrator who is seeking her own identity, which they succeed in outlining.
This is a brilliantly conceived and executed book—beautifully written, capturing so many insightful details of human life that speak for themselves as she describes them. I read it at almost one sitting, and now intend to read it again, not because I'm afraid I missed anything, but simply to savor it all.
