I’m amazed that many of the events in this book slipped so easily from my memory, as this read-through has scored them there indelibly. The forest, the mountains, the lake – it is the first book I have read for some time that captures such a sense of location, as if I’d been walked through the land by a professional cinematographer. That it achieves this using such uncomplicated, plain words is a…

Reading Constantine’s work is a strange experience. There’s a level of momentum involved. I don’t know whether it’s the flow of her sentences, the way she puts words together, or the fact that I don’t know what’s happening half the time, but it takes me a while to read at a steady pace.