This book serves as a healthy reminder of why I rarely read. "literary" fiction. I feel like the author was trying too hard to appear over-educated, witty, sexually-enlightened, etc. I *wanted* to follow the mystery of the death of the doctor but all that was thwarted by the chapters and chapters of Berk's affair with the college student and the chapters and chapters of his book The Chatelaine. I would like to think, but I am not completely confident that the story-within-the-story somehow ties together with Berk's "real" life. But again, what most interested me was the promise of a bit of medical mystery which was just not fulfilled in the first half of the book. I just kept thinking of what else I could be reading. Life is too short.