Matt Ruff: Set This House in Order

Reviewed by MARGIE THOMSON

Forget your usual crime thriller, or even horror fiction. Matt Ruff's new novel combines both these genres in a work that will leave you in no doubt that the greatest, scariest, wierdest adventure of all is to voyage inside the human mind.

His characters do just this, tying guide ropes to fixed objects so they'll be able to find their way back from the unknown caverns within their own psyches, or dropping pebbles like Hansel and Gretel.

And we all know what was waiting for those two when they set off into the woods ...

Ruff's two main characters, Andrew and Penny, strangers brought together thanks to the meddling of a friend, have each suffered such great childhood trauma that their "souls" have been torn apart, fracturing into multiple selves.

The analogy Andrew uses is of a rose bush, the branches of which have been ripped off to lie in pieces in the earth. Some simply die, some take root and become independent bushes.

The implications for a person is that one body becomes home for a number of competing souls and although they may have a common goal of protecting the body from harm, they set about it in different ways.

Ruff has clearly done heaps of research into Multiple Personality Disorder, yet he filters that research with grace and terrific passion through Andrew and Penny, and the resulting story is simply riveting.

As it opens, Andrew's disorder is more or less under control. All his souls are organised within a specially created geography within his own mind, a house and surrounds in which each personality has its own space and certain communal forums, although as we come to realise, there are rooms in that house that even Andrew doesn't know about.

Penny, though, is out of control as her various personalities run rampaging through her body. Andrew reluctantly offers to help her, thus unleashing a maelstrom of memory and chaos in all their lives.

Always intense and often gob-smackingly thrilling, this novel stuns almost to the end, until Ruff introduces a real-world thriller element: a new baddie who becomes the unfortunate focus of the action.

I was more than happy to be stuck in the strange world of Andrew and Penny. They were enthralling company, all 20 or so of them.

Publisher: Flamingo

Price: $29.99