Postmodern - or premodern? - autobiography. A book puzzling many reviewers. A work skipping backwards and forwards between fiction and non-fiction, between secrecy and betrayal. Critical comments have varied as always from scathing to acclamatory. David Hill: 'He proves again that he's one of our finest recorders of domestic landscapes ... always thoughtful, frequently vulnerable, constantly quotable.' Gerry Webb: 'slackly written, repetitious, preposterous, vain, snobbish, self-consciously mannered, irritatingly evasive, world weary.' Sebastian Brooke: 'Eldred-Grigg's prose style is very refined.'