In Muriel Sparks fantastic first novel the only things that arent ambiguous are her matchless originality & glittering wit. Caroline Rose is plagued by the tapping of typewriter keys & the strange detached narration of her every thought & action. She has an unusual problem
- she realises she is in a novel. Her fellow characters are also possibly deluded: Laurence her former lover finds diamonds in a loaf of bread
- could his elderly grandmother really be a smuggler? & Baron Stock her bookseller friend believes he is on the trail of Englands leading Satanist.