This is a brilliant and beguiling follow up to The Old Child for a writer of originality who deserves to be in the same league as Ali Smith and Safran Foer.This title is intended for anyone who relishes boldness, allegory and a twist in the telling: fans of the fiction of George Saunders, Judy Budnitz, Gina Ochsner, Margaret Atwood and Siri Hustvedt.The unnamed narrator of the 'book of words' has a dark past and with these words - carefully chosen and dropped like a trail through a forest - the reader is compelled to tread with her the uncertain and spiky terrain of memory. First there is her childhood. She was raised by a wet nurse, who took the place that should have been filled by her ever-distant mother. Then her school days: a piano teacher, a gardener, and her friend Anna, whose mind is filled with violent fantasies. And, all the while in the background, her father - a man full of knowledge and an idealised hero, until she realises that the world she has grown up in has begun to grind to a halt. Public transport is stopped, businesses are closed, and figures from her childhood disappear one after another - the regime is tightening its grip and it seems that her father is right at its centre.