This book is BANANAS & I'm not ashamed to say that I was riveted. How you get along with it will depend on your tolerance for all of the bourgeois Victorian anxieties that come alive in these sensation novels; in this case, we have the usual fears & prejudices about "otherness" in relation to bodies, disability, & also ideal womanhood. The protagonist being an intelligent, independent woman is welcome; the embedded notions of femininity, less so!