A change of genre for Boyd and he pulls it off very well. His style of writing lends itself very well to this two-stringed story - broad impressions, detailed observations. 
 He also made me believe that both story-lines had been written by women rather than by a man - nothing over the top but just subtly different. 
 Enjoyed it well enough that my next read will be Ordinary Thunderstorms and I'm about to order The New Confessions. It's not like me to read a single author at a time - not since I was a kid reading The Hardy Boys, anyway.