I sent you a bunch of thoughts by email, so here I'll just say--at least for starters--that I very much enjoyed the book too. Irene strikes me as a *very* un-self-aware person (who thinks that she is self-aware), and yes, all that about her husband could well have been completely in her head--but the lengths she lets it take her to reveal her unresolvable ambivalence toward Clare (it seems to me).

I thought Irene's state by the end was a beautifully portrayed example of severe depression, though it probably didn't go by that name at the time.