This is the best thing I've read in a while. It's fabulous: go read it at once.
My take is it's novel of manners meets magical realism--something that I never could have imagined before reading this. The Afterward's view is that in it "the comedy of manners discovers a religious vocation." Also true.
Alice Thomas Ellis is devoutly Catholic and yet sarcastically wry ("'She killed her lover,' said Aunt Irene, going on and on. 'Everyone wants to do that at some point. It's only natural. She just went too far.'")
Ellis dances gracefully between the trivial and the theologically deep. She's hilarious and sharply observant and I wish she were still alive and we could be friends.
(Ellis's The Summer House trilogy here.)
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