I loved this, although the ending defeated me slightly (can one be slightly defeated?).
The characters were all so well delineated, especially Lysander Reif. Wonderfully inventive plot - young man in Vienna in 1913, with a sexual problem, seeking help from analyst, seduced by a wonderful woman, sexual problem gone, then arrested for rape, rescued by the British embassy, but then required to spy for them to pay off his debt. So it becomes a spy story interspersed with all these wonderful characters.
Unclear to me at the end whether any of us really knew what was going on; was the baddie really a baddie, what was the role of the various women in Lysander's life and his mother (he sleeps with all the women except two), what was the role of the embassy staff in London & Vienna during the war?
Left me puzzled but wanting to re-read which I guess is good.
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