"These hallmarks of exile are subverted by Stepanova’s own authorial interjections which protect the novel from becoming a caricature of itself. “In any half-respectable book about a female novelist running away from her responsibilities,” she writes, “retribution would be sure to catch up with the heroine.” But life, unlike art, doesn’t always follow such a script, and it feels Stepanova wants us to experience the book in the same way. “She was a balloon on a thread”, she writes. Aren’t we all? This sense of aimlessness would be hard to sustain in a longer work, but in a slim novella such as this, Stepanova’s short vignettes — that move elegantly between M’s external and internal worlds — keep the story skipping along."
