Horrified, Lydia: I've read about 30% in audiobook form with the odd cover photo below. I'm on tenterhooks, and it's also excruciating. We are reading what Eddie says as ADULTS, and she's hearing them as a 16 year old, as if they make sense. No one is taking into account the tragedies she's been through at all.

Are there any Elizabeth Bowen fans among my mutuals? I just finished this, & I don’t think I’ve felt as stricken by a novelist’s rendering of betrayal since I first read The Golden Bowl or The Portrait of a Lady. Sitting here dumbstruck (when I should be finishing a paper!)

I've read about 30% in audiobook form with the odd cover photo below. I'm on tenterhooks, and it's also excruciating. We are reading what Eddie says as ADULTS, and she's hearing them as a 16 year old, as if they make sense. No one is taking into account the tragedies she's been through at all.

Also I do remember it ending with a betrayal, and I honestly can't tell who is going to do the betraying. Eddie's betrayal seems expected. Portia is fully capable of betrayal herself, she's so loosely attached to anyone.

The betrayals cascade at the end in fact But as you have already inferred, Portia is on the receiving end of most , though not all, of the awfulness

Eddie is so odd (I keep thinking his name is Ollie), who says "I can't stand writing, I won't have you choosing words over [meaning about] me. If you do," some vague threat. While he ticks off every box for a controlling boyfriend, in today's terms.

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