A woman wakes in a room she doesn't recognise. Her face in the mirror is one she's never seen and it's only when she talks to herself that she learns she's an English speaker. Mastering her panic, she leaves the building to explore the surrounding town as night falls. The description of her wanderings is lingering and haunting: Darkened terraces, a procession carrying a coffin to the quay, endless staircases, a sacrament performed in a nearly empty cathedral, a street in which a line of new cars recedes to one of horse-drawn carriages.

Eventually the woman finds a name and a place amongst a set of ex-pats whom she might have known and who might regard her kindly. There really are too many episodes portraying rather dull encounters between these people, but somehow each reinforces a sense of menace. Very occasionally Miriam, the protagonist, feels a sense of recognition; less infrequently, she feels that someone or something is threatening her. In the end the mystery is solved. Or not.

There's a point at which the plot and dialogue suddenly become Dan Brown channelling Tom Clancy. In any other case I'd find this retch-making, but here it was only mildly bothersome, either because the book had as it were cast a spell or because I had long since stopped taking it at face value. Nonetheless, this bit leads to some explanations which if taken literally are pretty thoroughly implausible. The resolution, the final passage of the book, seems an either/or matter but it's either/or in a fractal sort of way.

I imagine one could read this book as a mystery/thriller or as a theological allegory but to me it seemed a meditation upon the nature of identity and perhaps consciousness. Some passages seem like a prose interpretation of 'The Wasteland'. In any case it's something I might very well read again.