I listened to the audiobook on Hoopla narrated by Gemma Dawson. The Atlantic published a list of The Great American Novels earlier this year. There was a lot more diversity amongst the authors on this list compared to others I've seen, so I added several books to my reading list. I had also recently seen a review of a graphic biography about Djuna Barnes that will be published later this year. I jumped into this novel, which is Modernist, without knowing much about the Modernist movement. T.S. Eliot wrote an introduction praising the novel as an example of this artistic movement. He suggested that people who like poetry would appreciate her use of language. It certainly is florid in its literary stream-of-consciousness. Eliot also prepared me not to expect much plot, but I really like a strong plot. Audiobooks are "real" reading, but it is more passive. By the end, I had forgotten how the two characters, who converse about a woman's love for another woman, connect to the characters introduced at the beginning. I struggled to fully understand this book. It was not for me.
