I didn't enjoy this novel, set in 1930's post-revolutionnary Mexico. The book opens with the marriage at an early age of the narrator, Catalina, to a much older general, Andres Ascencio, and ends about 15 years later with Ascencio's death. Catalina is my main problem; I found her wholly unlikeable, and often found myself wanting to reach into the novel and give her a slap. I know that this is supposed to be a feminist novel about a woman's journey towards self-determination in a macho world, but in fact her "journey" seems to take her from submissive wife who refuses to believe her husband is involved in mass killings despite all the evidence, to selfish woman who, at best, ignores her children completely ("it was years since I'd last played with my children") or, at worst, lives out her many affairs under their noses. Yes, I know we've seen the heroines of the great 19th century adultery novels behave like this, but Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina and Ana Ozores get away with it by being better-drawn characters in better-written novels.