Part of the problem may be the pacing – Moggach builds her tale with painstaking slowness, wanting the non-literariness of the prose to reflect accurately her non-literary narrator. Here, though, one militates against the other so that Leila, while believable, is not intriguing enough in herself and the concept, intriguing though it is, is just not believable enough. The marrying of the two – authenticity and artifice – is essentially what a novel is. Meanwhile, its unlikely scenario – would you impersonate a person who wants to kill herself, to spare her loved ones pain? – becomes dependent upon very obvious devices to create tension. Moggach has got herself in a real quandary here: the novel’s much-needed authenticity lies solely in her factual detailing of the daily life of an invisible heroine (nobody notices Leila), in her utter isolation, in the relentless mundane repetition of the task in front of her. But the truth is that it’s actually a problem for the novel. There’s understandable excitement from Moggach’s publishers over this concept, simple and intriguing as it seems.
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