to give you a picture of how much I enjoyed this, I nearly missed my stop on the bus. After getting off onto (thankfully) the right place on the street, I sat down at the bus stop and carried on reading. I travelled on a train up the country and then home on that bus, and at no point did I want to put this book down until it was finished. I didn't even eat today until this book was done. This was honestly the most addictive thing I have read this year.

I related to absolutely none of these characters in any of their situations but each one of them was so well developed and vivid you could just imagine perfectly what each individual was like. the story was absolutely gripping and through the use of conversation I found my thoughts about characters were swayed through the use of other characters. I knew I disliked Stanley very early on, but his persuasive male discourse made ME want to stay with him and trust him, and I really felt for Stella in her situation.

This was just a fantastic read, which has clearly inspired so many other works of fiction and media. some references were more obvious that I was aware of; Almoldovar's film "all about my mother" which story centres around a theatre production, and a small reference in the mystery book " [b:Felidae|1175398|Felidae (Felidae, #1)|Akif Pirinçci|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1342715879s/1175398.jpg|1239176] " which lightly references Williams's writing style in his plays at a point. some references however I did not even REALISE were references for many years! A favourite band of mine called Nightwish referenced this play in two of their songs, Sahara and Dead boy's poem, and I didn't even know these were references to a play, however the composer has been known to reference strongly other novels in his songwriting from stephen king to walt whitman. I think the amount of references to this play lurking about shows credit to the amount of influence it has had on others and that really says it all to me!