**** enjoyable to read; revisionist account

**** another masterpiece; one of the world's great novelists

** quite accessible; nice illustrations

*** not a novel; fragmentary kafkaesque retellings

***** explains consciousness; ideas about afterlife and animals are off track

* starts out as proustian pastiche but becomes precious and tiresome by the end

*** novella-length, more on queiros' theme of repression

no original ideas; malcolm gladwell clone retreads well-worn turf