I’d never heard of this novel or this novelist, but this book is very good. Our narrator is a 27 year old Scottish woman who works as a school teacher. I say works as a school teacher because she seems pretty sure she is not long for that job and is showing all the signs of burnout. She is spiraling when the novel opens but it’s not clear why initially. That later becomes clear but what we do know is that she is basically counting the minutes of every day, feeling every idea, sensation, and moment in barely held together emotional and mental pain. We also learn that she had recent been involved with a married man, but he has recently died and what we understand is that while her pain is incredibly real, there’s no social space in the world for her grief. Later, we come to understand that this is grief compiled on grief.
Every spiral is a spiral into or a spiral out of, and we are with her as she is spiraling into a kind of break that will land her in a hospital by about midway through the book. There, alongside her, we come to know more and understand more about her life.
This book is written in very close first narration. There’s even beyond close moments where she’s taking in the various media and sounds of the world around and moving in and out of memory and free association. It’s a little on the nose to call the novel breathless, but in the way that the narrator cannot break away from her experiences, neither can we.