A book of two halves: "The Professor" an intense, emotional memoir about a relationship between Terry Castle and a female professor, twenty years her senior, in the 1970s, and "And Other Writing", six articles about Castle's life and interests. These two halves don't gel well: "The Professor" could easily be a stand-alone piece, being well over 100 pages long, and its impact is complicated, rather than strengthened, by the other essays. At its best, Castle's writing is witty and understated, with a sense of emotional honesty. She also often uses long paragraphs and a stream-of-consciousness style, which makes the reader feel like they are being knocked on the head: sometimes this is effective, and sometimes it's off-putting. I enjoyed "The Professor" as a piece about a taboo relationship, and as a piece, similar to Dorothy Strachey's "Olivia", about a devastating crush on an older woman. In this case, the relationship is consummated, and the focus is not so much on the power imbalance as the Professor's instability, and how being in the closet has blinkered her. It's an interesting as lesbian history, but I also found the work as a whole to be very uneven, and that even "The Professor" was discursive and wandered into various places that didn't necessarily enhance or add to the central narrative. Worth reading, but only just.