Set This House In Order: A Romance Of Souls (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
Within a week of finishing this book, I had loaned my copy to a friend and bought a copy for my brother. This is exactly the kind of inspired, ambitious fiction that I want to read, and I would occasionally start to mourn or panic when I would be hit by some reminder that, at some point, I was going to have to finish the novel and move on to another. Yes, for me, it is that good.The story centers on one complicated person and his internal and external relationships. Andy Gage is a person with multiple personality disorder (or dissociative identity disorder, depending on how technical of a description one needs), represented as a collection of different characters sharing space in a metaphorical house inside his mind (a lot of sci-fi is judged on effective worldbuilding, and to the extent that this novel is kind of sci-fi, the main character himself is the world being built, which is beautiful). There is a mischievous teenager, a female artist, a young boy, an outright villain, and a father figure, among many others, and Andy is the normal guy trying to keep some order and live an externally normal life. He works a job with some lovably quirky Pacific Northwest kinds of characters, and the plot starts moving when his boss hires a new employee who shares Andy's condition - but not his awareness of it.The title suggests that the two characters with the same condition are romantically connected, but that's not exactly true, and I think the book is much richer for avoiding that relatively predictable plot line. This is not a romantic comedy - it's an exploration of identity. While Andy's different personalities are dramatically disconnected, he is essentially a realistically complex person. The way Ruff writes him, he is like all of us - the different aspects of our personalities are more integrated than Andy's, but Andy very much represents humanity and our warring impulses and desires, and Ruff has more than enough literary talent to draw out the universal in his engagingly bizarre protagonist. I don't know that this book has much to do with real-life characteristics and treatment of dissociative identity disorder (in his defense, Ruff isn't writing a textbook - he's writing a beautiful novel that only needs enough factual accuracy to be internally consistent, such as always placing the origin of the disorder in overwhelming childhood trauma), but it's a fascinating look at the complexity of identity. In a great passage, Andy explains that when something breaks, it can be integrated back together - but only if each piece remains static (for example, if you drop your coffee mug, you can let the pieces sit in a box for a month until you remember to buy super glue, and you can still reconstruct it just fine). Personality, though, is complicated, always growing and changing, so Andy explores methods to help harmonize his personalities without combining them into one soul. I suspect that this is not how real therapy works, but it resonates at the universal level where I believe Ruff intends it to hit. I have certain childish sides to myself - but they're not childish in the same way they were when I was in college. I have developed and matured at various levels, and a healthy understanding of myself probably does need to take that into consideration. It's a powerful challenge, and I love that Ruff goes there with such creativity.The book isn't all introspection, though. Ruff has shown, in each of his novels, a real talent for horror writing, and that sneaks into the story at just the right moments here. There's a particularly shocking incident early in the narrative to establish that, yes, while Andy's head seems like a funny place to be, there is a real danger in surrendering yourself to a part of you that you can't control, and it is terrifying to see the many many ways that Andy's souls sabotage each other. Penny, the co-worker with the shared condition, also suffers tragic consequences of her chaotic mix of identities, and even as she develops into a stronger heroine, her safety is never certain. There are some dramatic showdowns near the end of the book that are creative and achingly suspenseful - and if Ruff slips into kind of a Carol Goodman or Jodi Picoult place when it comes to the mystery climax, it's kind of how the genre works these days, and at least he uses some relatively apathetic story elements to continue the character development that makes the novel so unforgettable.This novel is a treasure, full of warmth and love and surprises and terror and empathy. I love all of Matt Ruff's novels, and this is my favorite. I highly recommend it.
I remember the first time that I learned of multiple personality disorders. My mom made us watch the made for tv movie Sybil starring Sally Field. Me being me, I've appropriated multiple personality disorder to refer to all kinds of other mental shit, like the two devils on my shoulder who egg me on to do stupid shit. When you don't feel alone with yourself. Mostly just my mood swings (depressed to really depressed). I have a lot of those. The Charlie Brown feeling a ton of conflicting emotions all at once (when I was a kid I quoted that Charlie Brown line to my family to tell them how I felt. They laughed. I Charlie Brown walked away). But I never had anything as cool as the system that Matt Ruff set up in Set This House In Order. It's a house inside the brain that, well, houses all of the shard/facets of a very confused individual. It might be crazy, definitely not healthy, but there is something unlonely about it that I thought was kinda special.Trivia time: Actor Rob Morrow suggested to Matt Ruff the idea of writing a book about multiple personality disorder. I am reluctant to give much other credit to Morrow, though (he's not a good actor, either). My go-to definition for credit giving is the hole that triggered Paul McCartney to write "Fixin' a hole". The hole was just there. Anyway, that's not how I heard of Matt Ruff. I heard of him when I spotted the cover of Fool on the Hill. "The Beatles!" and that was that. I guess that wasn't much of a story. But I love those times when I discover something I really like by accident. Concepts are good if you can use them. So are triggers like Paul McCartney's hole, if you give it your own life.D'oh! The full title is Set This House in Order: a Romance of Souls. It is a love story. I loved the romance between his/herself. There is a love story. But what I remember now, more than anything else, is the romance between oneself as acceptance. Not as navel-gazing just that, well, sometimes we are all we have. The part within that you don't know about that surprises you. Maybe I'm crazy but I can feel less lonely talking to myself (in my head) 'cause I don't think when I talk, and so don't know what I'm going to say all of the time. It's the thing about being mixed up about so much stuff.Set This House In Order was beautiful in determining those surprise threads and finding some way of getting them to connect. It's a mystery about figuring out stuff that fucked up stuff that happened and slaying ghosts.I don't think my mind is a house. It is definitely outdoors and has a big old oppressive sky that sometimes I don't notice and other times it looks really big and I'm "I didn't notice how big that's always been."
What do You think about Set This House In Order: A Romance Of Souls (2004)?
You'd think that a novel about multiple personality disorder would result in pretty experimental writing, but instead, this is a pretty straight-forward read which reminded me of Richard Russo or Wally Lamb. In other words, I can't believe this isn't a movie yet or an Oprah selection. I'm getting lost in a tangent, but despite my various pretensions and this book's pop sensibilities, I loved reading this book. There's something infinitely fascinating about multiple personalities for me, and this really captures something about its essence that might be called insight. Although, I have no real experience with MPD, so perhaps its an illusion.I did wish that the plot was more inspired/surprising, since the hooks/twists were pretty tepid, but in a sense, I didn't care. Sometimes, I think writers create characters that they care too much about to have anything really bad happen to, and I felt the same way. I felt something about the protagonists and their several personalities that bordered on protectiveness.Did I say how much I enjoyed this book?
—David Rim
I'm so angry with Matt Ruff and/or his editors. This novel could have been genius if someone, anyone, would have identified the disaster that Part Ten brings to the entire structure of the work. Up until Part Ten, about page 400, I thought this was a compelling, cleverly crafted novel about someone with Multiple Personality Disorder. I could hardly put it down. Essentially, up to that point, it's about an internal (psychological) struggle manifest in the world. Then, at the very end, a wholly different struggle for physical survival is introduced. Just as he did with his novel Bad Monkey, imo, Ruff doesn't bring closure to a superb story and ends up messing the whole thing up. Darn him!Ruff is like a master baker who gets every detail right, but cannot pipe the final rosettes in place without ruining the whole cake. And NO ONE at Harper noticed this?That said, I'll continue reading his stuff. I admire his storytelling skill. For the first 400 pages, I couldn't get enough of this story. 400 pages of genius followed by 75 or so pages of convoluted-I'll-just-let-the-plot-take-over-here muck deserves 4 stars.
—Jon Edward
Sempre tive muita curiosidade em relação a este livro. Uma história sobre uma personagem com múltipla personalidade tinha o potencial para ser brilhante ou um desastre. Curiosamente o autor consegue articular bem esta multiplicidade de personagens e dar-lhes o espaço necessário. Se de início se estranha, ao fim de alguns capítulos torna-se habitual a presença de tantos "eus" pela história, e apesar do corpo ser sempre o mesmo, cada personagem consegue apresentar-se ao leitor de forma independente. Apesar de tudo, tenho de dizer que a história não me cativou muito e os únicos momentos em que me lembro de ler com alguma emoção, foram os capítulos finais em que são apresentadas as respostas para tudo aquilo que tinhamos vindo a questionar desde o início. Pensei em dar apenas 2 estrelas, mas decidi-me por 3. A originalidade do personagem principal e a forma segura como o autor conseguiu "equilibrar" as inúmeras personagens fez por merecer mais. :)
—Ana
