Forty Rooms.

In Forty Rooms Olga Grushin tells the story of a woman's life by relating a chronological series of incidents that take place in forty different rooms that she has spent time in over the course of her life.  Born in Russia, the woman moves to America to attend college. From childhood she has dreamt of becoming a poet and living an unconventional life and although she continues to compose poetry for most of her adult life she is never a poet and settles into the life of a suburban wife and mother. We never get to know what the woman is called other than her married name of Mrs  Caldwell.

This book has had very favorable reviews and I was looking forward to reading it immensely. I was intrigued by the idea of telling a life story through the device of forty rooms and it was a very effective method of doing so. However I have very mixed feelings about the book... 

I really disliked the first one hundred or so pages of the book that dealt with the protagonist's childhood and adolescence. I found this part of the book to be very slow moving and there was a lot of dialogue with an imaginary friend and details of dreams and day dreams that didn't appeal to me. 

The second two thirds of the book were much better for me as the story moved at a faster pace and I found the story to be more interesting. 

Forty rooms is well written and there are a lot of different themes explored within it but for me it was a very uneven read whilst there are some very good parts I don't think that it lives up to the exceptional reviews that it has received...