How do you read a book that leaves you gasping, having stolen your identity? What do you do when you take on all nine chambers as if they were always in your heart, were you?

This book by Pariat, had me in its grip from its very first chapter. I was completely taken.

When you begin the book, you wonder, and you read, and then you wonder some more, till you are wonderstruck at the author’s craft. She steals into your mind’s crevices, as she creates a complex character out of you, by cleverly using the second person narrative. How does one escape that, and yet keep your distance from such like? You can’t, and you won’t  because you are then curious to follow through, to the very end, of each Chamber as she draws you in, mystically.

The language employed is as simple as it is splendid.

Each chapter is linked, inextricably, to the next, but you don’t quite know where, coz it will suddenly refer to the past, and pow, you realize that you have shed the earlier skin, and adopted a new life, a quasi new identity! She seals you into the skin of the character, who is : mysterious, annoying, lovable, loving, adventurous, and almost wholly removed from the play at work, ever so often. She is as carnal, as she is spiritual- this nameless person at the center of the novel.

Pariat’s strengths lie in constantly surprising you, and inevitably draw you into the mind of this lover of feline creatures. You travel different lands with her, and yet you have no name, because we are all her.

I applaud Pariat’s novel, which had me in its hold in its infancy, in a manner of speaking,….every Chapter, let me tell you, has a leading name. Now you might wonder if the name is You, the reader, or the name of the new Lover. Go figure!