Oh man, so I was flipping through reviews of this on goodreads and such, like you do. And I was totally shocked by the number of people who independently said, "this was nice, but I don't get why we had the excerpts from the book within a book. It would have been so much better without." And I was like 'what?!' because that makes no sense to me. The book within a book was amazing; I love the way this novel treated science fiction and eroticism like secrets. Secrets a woman would have to keep. The excerpts were so decadent, so otherworldly, but of course Laura was a pseud, of course it was all hidden even from the reader, the way a woman like Iris would be forced to hide her rich inner life.

/babble.

Anyway, the way I think this book didn't come together for me was at a higher meta level. I kept feeling like the nested tales that the lovers tell each other in Iris's book were reaching for something to do with gender and power and sex. There were obvious readings, but I didn't find them particularly interesting, and I kept feeling like there was something more the stories were supposed to be illuminating, except the pieces weren't lining up for me. Dunno. I'll probably reread it sometime, and then who knows what I'll think.