I couldn't put this book down. Harrowing it is; disturbing, upsetting, shocking - but brilliant.
It is very hard to identify with the main character; but by doing this, by alienating the reader through unnecessarily complicated language and an ultimately unsympathetic narrator, the author ensures the reader does not automatically take her side in the debate. This makes you start to question her viewpoint rather than just accepting it, opening the book up to the moral debate that is at the heart of it: is evil innate or learned?
The book doesn't answer the above question, and having read the book neither can I. However, it made me think, it made me question what I believe, and although the ending will never be as shocking as it was on the first read, I will go back to this book again and again.