Rhys’ prose is mesmerising for all the ways she so closely captures what happens inside a woman’s head. Sophia felt desperately and devastatingly real to me, almost immediately, and I couldn’t bear to tear my eyes away from her because it just felt so important that she be seen. Glimpses of hope amidst desolate loss, glimpses of humanity amidst the almost collapse of it, Sophia’s story, never linear and always heartbreaking, was moving and scarily real. 

I am trying hard to be like you. I know I don’t succeed, but look how hard I try. Three hours to choose a hat; every morning an hour and a half trying to make myself look like everybody else. Every word I say has chains around its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights. Since I was born, hasn’t every word I’ve said, every thought I’ve thought, everything I’ve done, been tied up, weighted, chained? And mind you, I know that with all this I don’t succeed. Or I succeed in flashes only too damned well. Think — and have a bit of pity. That is, if you ever think, you apes, which I doubt.