" Whew. This novel is chock full of pithy aphorisms and well-posed questions, both in structure and text, but the bumpy ride through the sentences can get rough. Each character is more of a lens for a set of ideas than a person--but that will probably be o.k. with the reader who is enjoying the ideas. The ideas are fun; the prose is preachy. At one point I was completely enthralled in the dialectics, then the flatness of the characters jabbed at the text like bits of broken glass. Ouch. I was glad to learn a little about Salazar and Portuguese history, but it was too little for me. I guess I would have liked more of a historical context and less existential didacticism. I'm a picky reader. "
— Tamara, 1/29/2014