An interesting novella. Her typical sharp sentences. A complex theme. A disastrous ending. Africa? My question reading it: Apparently she wrote this aged 82…. so, is it just confused, slapdash, but it comes across (the repetition) as profound? Did her publisher just say, “Muriel, whatever, your readers will love it and it’s another vacation cottage for you (and me) so who cares if it makes sense?!” Or is incredibly dense, and if you were a PhD you could do text analysis of the repetitions and “see” underlying layers of complexity that are riffing on the simple story?