I picked up this book because I enjoyed Foe by the same author. This one was equally creepy.
The narrative style has a dreamlike quality; disjointed, eerie, odd, strange, and weird. I could still mostly follow the story though. It’s told with chapters devoted to people talking about what happened, an apparent murder or suicide, and a woman navel-gazing.
The novel starts out with a woman talking about how she’s thinking of ending things. The reader is led to believe she’s thinking of ending her relationship with Jake, the man who’s taking her to see his parents. They drive in the snowy dark, he shows her around his family farm, then introduces her to his parents, where they have dinner.
Everything about meeting the parents is slightly off, from conversation that doesn’t quite match up to seeing photos of her as a child in his house. They leave, get a lemonade, and go to a school even though it’s closed. There, she’s confronted with the reality that she is him and he’s taking his own life.
The ending ties it up nicely, but still leaves the reader with a sense of, ‘what the hell did I just read?’.
The disassociation of Jake is interesting. He’s imagining a girlfriend’s point of view of his life and himself, but left me wondering if she was always a part of him, if he either has multiple personalities or was raised a girl and is now a man.
Weird, eerie book, definitely worth a read.
Should Be Writing 