Being conditioned by your environment is something that happens to everyone. What do we grow into? What is the proper way to grow? I identified a lot with the character's battles with ordinary convention, her committment to a restrictive lifestyle--feeling unable to belong to anything else. All of the choices she makes through the novel, to get involved in relationships, to follow whatever grain, seem entirely fluid when meeting her perspective. There is darkness, there are rituals, there are boundaries that might seem awkwardly placed, as the main character, Keiko, accepts much out of her strange perspective, but it is a vantage point that one becomes entirely familiar with, and one understands, because the perspective from the other side of what is considered normal is elaborated so well. Highly reccomended.