It was entertaining and well-written, but I didn’t realize at first just how hooked I was. The book begins with something of a cozy mystery flavor. And if she comes across as a little "off," well, aren’t they all? She ingratiates herself with the reader just as she does with her co-characters. She paints their faults with obvious exaggeration but almost as if she is apologizing for making fun of them because she is too nice to mock people. She has a delightful wit, particularly in the way she describes people. Harriet was a friend of Ned’s, a friend of the Gillespie family, and she knows the truth, the whole sordid truth, so she’ll recount her relationship with the family from beginning to end. Many years ago, he had been a rising talent, but his career was cut tragically short. She wants to leave a record for the world, or perhaps set the record straight, about what happened to the young artist Ned Gillespie, a painter from Glasgow. She is writing her memoirs as she sits alone in her apartment in Bloomsbury with only two finches and a paid companion for company. Harriet Baxter, an elderly spinster (for lack of a better word) narrates the book.
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