My lunch break in the second week was mostly devoted to this slim book. The protagonist Deirdre was bitter, self-centred, unlikable and unreliable. The attraction was seeing how she came to be this way. The setting - a near future South Africa struggling with the impacts of climate change, including drought, wildfires and water shortages - was well drawn. I appreciated Jennings' sparse prose and the way she interrogated the legacy of apartheid in South Africa, particularly the need to acknowledge culpability in order to move forward . A depressing allegorical read, but one that offered at least a glimmer of hope.