This was difficult. At times, it felt like Iris Murdoch's own personal Hip Replacement - having fled London for the ugly, rural coast, a playwright presumes to write a memoir but inadvertently documents all that distracts him from his stated purpose. Nothing can dampen one's enthusiasm for a lifestyle more than someone else fictionalizing its logical extreme; who would have known that it's easier to pick out the shortcomings of a decision when it's framed as someone else's?

Fifty or sixty pages in, relief - other characters are introduced to interrupt the dirge of Murdoch's uncanny, sneering recitation and realization of, uh, the reader's exact feelings on, say, love (pg. 33) or fancy restaurants (pg. 21), and the introduction of other characters allows the reader to recall that they contain multitudes, or at least the ability to find themselves in characters outside of the narrator (should you intend to make it through the entire book with any degree of self-worth, this is absolutely essential). Naturally, the effect's a bit diluted by the introduction of dialogue, but this remains well worth your time whether or not you've committed to that tract of desert land in Utah.