Getting the knives out

It’s odd that this book should be about a cleaner, because it exactly conjures up the emotions I felt when I worked as a cleaning lady many years ago. Contemplating the grease-encrusted kitchen floor I was about to scrub, I’d cry aloud: ‘How long must I perform this thankless, gruelling task? Why me?’ These agonised expressions were wordlessly repeated as I waded through this dismal novel.

The main character is a girl called Agnes, and I spent many hours trying to work out whether she had no personality at all or too many personalities. She is wonderfully adept at managing restaurants, looking after babies and engaging in profound
philosophical dialogue; yet she remains disturbingly dim. She is illiterate, but works as an accomplished secretary. Occasionally, she tries to attack people with knives; yet we are supposed to like her. Every time I thought I had got her measure, she would metamorphose into an entirely different Agnes, duller than the last.