At a mere 98 pages, this novella is best read in a single sitting. It is a gentle meditation on mother and daughter relationships; what is said, what is left unsaid. It has a melancholy about it, a sense of missed opportunities for the women to have formed a closer bond.

The characters have no names (a recent trend in literature that is starting to grate, I must say) and there is no dialogue; conversations are described in the text. I come from generations of Anglo-Irish, so the issues that are alluded to in regards to Asian sensibilities did not resonate with me. Having said that, I think this familial tension between mothers and daughters is universal!

I found one glaring error in the text: the daughter reminisces about a storm that cut the power when she and her partner were moving house. They found candles to illuminate the darkened rooms and then her partner put on the record player and ‘danced slowly and achingly’ - how did he manage to turn the record player on if there was no power? Why didn’t someone pick this up before publication?

Error aside, there was something rather lovely about this book: gentle, unhurried, meditative.