Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls Book

For some reason always confused Matt Ruff's Sewer Gas and Electric , with Jim Dodge's Stone Junction , I guess I thought this one would also be some kind of hippie vision-quest parable thingy. Which: OMG no.

I don't want to talk much about the plot, because, especially for those of us with an unhealthy obsession with books, it's pretty rare to be able to go into something totally fresh and clean, without an idea of what kinds of people like it, what the hype has been, how well it's selling, what the major themes are, etc. And Set This House in Order'which, due to its extreme powers of disassociation, reminded me vaguely of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time 'is a particularly great one to go into knowing nothing. So I'm not going to do anything remotely spoilery.

I'll just say this: This book is ridiculously engrossing. The characters are a total fascination; both their internal and external machinations are believably and heartbreaking and strong and true. In some ways it's a very straightforward book (although plotwise, it's pretty twisty), because it's not too engorged with dense language or symbolism or other kinds of literary trickery. The writing is slight enough and smart enough to stand back and let the plot come screaming through, to Matt Ruff's great credit.

This is a doozy of a story, and it flings you on ahead of it, through all its bobs and weaves. It's joyful and harrowing, devastating and redemptive, original and believable, and very, very engaging.