Extremely interesting review, Jodie. I admit I haven't read this book, and at least partly because of the bleakness you mention. Sure, bleak is fine, but I don't find it realistic myself to conceive of a world which is wholly bleak. None of us live that way, and often you find the worst situations are in reality leavened by humour, tenderness, compassion and spiritual awareness. Just as I'd find a book that was a complete jolly farce excessive in its way, so I do books that shroud themselves in the negative. It's a chicken and egg question, then, whether the dark portrait Krauss paints of the self-protective person is because she thinks that attribute is dangerous, or because she's looking at the dark side of whatever comes into her focus. There are no causal links, however, between an individual desire for privacy and poor ethics. None.