I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness throughout this book. Sadness at the losses suffered by Parfait, sadness at the fact that Augusta never really seemed to fit in anywhere, sadness at Julia’s guilt carried throughout her life and the sad loss of lives towards the end. It seemed sad that Augusta was a very clever person, who really just wasted her knowledge and education. It’s a beautifully written book – obviously written by someone with a huge love of words, but it’s also quite a quirky, quite disjointed read, sometimes implying things rather than stating them, which meant that I sometimes wasn’t sure what was going on. The ending was quite nice, but I just didn't feel any joy at all in the story.