Set This House in Order

Utterly original and completely engaging, Ruff creates a cast of characters that is unforgettable. What's more, he left me wondering about what it really means to be me, to be you -- why anyone is who they are, and even more how they are. He left me questioning the fine lines between sanity and insanity, between rational and irrational, between protection and escape. And he did all that while telling a mighty fine story. A new favourite.

Andy Gage is just one of the souls, or personalities, that inhabit a single body. He is usually the one in charge of running the body, while the other souls go about their own business, or watch from the sidelines and provide advice and commentary about what Andy is doing. Andy gets a job at a small tech startup, and when a new employee called Mouse is hired, he quickly realizes that she also has multiple personalities, but she is not aware of it. Andy wants to help her understand her own mental state, but also has to deal with internal conflicts with his own personalities.

This book is a big departure for Ruff. His writing is usually funny and madcap and light, but this book is very heavy. The humor is still there, and there is still a show more somewhat ridiculous and action-packed climax with many surprising plot twists, but the subject matter is really heavy. The book has some very vivid depictions of child abuse, including sexual abuse, so it's not an easy read and sensitive readers might want to avoid it.

Ruff handles the mental illness of his main characters with understanding and sensitivity. His explanation of how multiple personalities come about, and the different approaches to coping with it, is fascinating, and honestly gave me some new ways to think about my own mental health. The book also clearly makes the point that even people who are "normal" have mental health problems, and Andy often seems like the most sane person in the book. show less

I read Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff and quite enjoyed it as a fast paced mind fuck. So I expected something different for this book.

Turns out this story is completely different, but I wasn't disappointed at all.

It's the story of Andy who has multiple personalities. With therapy he has learned to cope with the many souls, as he calls them, vying for attention and has them under control.

His new coworker Penny is a multiple like him, but she's not aware of her other souls. For everyone else, she's moody, but she has inexplicable blackouts, when her other souls take over. When they ask Andy for help, he can't turn her down, even if this means revisiting some very painful memories of his own.

The simile of a house, that needs to be set in order show more worked very well for me and the insight into Andy's souls was fascinating. He's very wise for his age, yet naive at times, but within the story it all works perfectly together.

The story is beautiful, sad, intense and very well told. The book stayed with me, long after I put it down. show less

Andrew Gage is only two years old, but he’s a grown man. He was born in 1965 and murdered when he was young. These statements are all true. Andrew has MPD- multiple personality disorder. Andy’s soul died when he was a child, killed by his stepfather. A large number of personalities now live within the body, splintered off through the years as Andy’s stepfather abused him.

Penny Driver also has MPD, but doesn’t know it when she first meets Andy. Andy’s boss, Julie, who knows about Andy’s diagnosis, recognizes the same symptoms in Penny when they meet, and she hires Penny to work for her, bringing Andy and Penny together. Julie says she hopes Andy can help Penny, but all hell breaks loose when the two meet. Andy’s carefully show more constructed ‘house’ in his head, which holds all his souls, breaks down. There follows an adventure of discovery that takes place in both physical space and in the space and time of Andy’s head as what really happened in Andy’s past is brought to light.

While the first part of the novel seemed rather slow to me, after a while it picks up and starts moving at breakneck speed. Just as you think you might know the truth, something else is revealed that changes everything. In the last quarter or so of the book so many things were happening that I was starting to wonder if some of the flesh and blood characters weren’t real, but just more personalities in Andy’s head. Given all that was being revealed, it really wouldn’t have been surprising. The truth is so complex that I’m amazed that the author was able to keep track of all the strands and tie them up in the end.

Once I got past the slower bit in the beginning, I couldn’t put this book down. I couldn’t wait to see which personality would win out and run the body. I couldn’t wait to see what the truth of Andy’s abuse was, and the truth behind his stepfather’s death.

It’s a book not just about MPD, psychology, and child abuse, but about relationships, and the pathology of people who are supposed to be ‘normal’ but allow horrible things to happen. More than anything else, it’s about the strength of the human spirit and its will to survive. show less

Wow. This book was totally, completely different from Matt Ruff's first two books. Firmly on the literature side of the literature/humor/fantasy border that the first two books straddled, this book managed to retain the inventiveness and some of the humor, while working with a completely different and more serious subject matter. Unlike the previous books, which had enough characters to warrant a Dramatis Personae, this book only had about 10 charaters... well, only about 10 bodies. When two of those bodies are home to multiple personalities, the character list expands considerably. It was a really fascinating depiction of what it might be like to live with MPD, although the tone shifted about halfway through from psychological account show more to murder mystery. The ending, although probably more realistic than most fiction, nonetheless fizzled a little bit, and there were some interesting issues that got raised halfway through the book but were never dealt with satisfactorily. Still, really engagingly written and very very interesting; I have a feeling this one is going to stick in my head for a while. show less

Andrew is the personality in charge of "driving" the soul-ridden body of Andy Gage. Born from the ashes of Andy Gage's mind, the society of multiple personalities live in a stable arrangement together thanks to a helpful therapist. Andrew is a recently born personality trying to give the body a fairly normal life, starting with a new job at a software company. But Andrew's stability is threatened when his impulsive boss, Julie, hires Penny, another victim of multiple personality disorder. Julie wants Andrew to help Penny tame the chaos in her head. Penny doesn't understand her condition, but some of her other personalities do. Andrew is reluctant to get involved, but Penny's group of protective personas make a plea for help. When his show more own house of souls collapses under the strain of several shocks, Andrew and Penny end up on a road-trip to confront the past.

This is one of the best fiction books I've read this year. Ruff's handling of the multiple personalities is both inventive and sensitive. He is straightforward in dealing with the abuse that led to Andrew and Penny's fractured state - it's clearly important, but not sensationalized. In spite of the serious subject matter, Ruff manages to incorporate a good measure of humor into the story. Andrew's journey gives a whole new meaning to "finding yourself." Ruff's excellent characterizations make it easy to root for Andrew, Penny, and their collective internal societies.

I like that Ruff avoids the trap of a cliched, sappy ending, instead making it clear that there are no easy solutions. Ruff's plot was engrossing in all its twists and turns, and only one late section seemed to jump a bit off the tracks. This is a compelling book that will entertain you even as it makes you think about how we all interact with the world.

5 Stars show less

I'm going to look at this in terms of the book's portrayal of multiplicity, since as a multiple this is most important to me, and the book's plot has already been reviewed.

Set This House in Order is in my opinion one of the best books on multiplicity and Dissociative Identity Disorder. The protagonist is multiple and has chosen not to integrate, and is facing no problems because of this, showing the situation of real multiples better than most popular literature. The characters are not seen as disordered, are happy and comfortable with their multiplicity, and are shown as relatively normal.

But not everything in the novel can be taken literally; Ruff's view seems to be that healthy multiples cannot exist without therapy (most therapists show more stress "integration," or becoming one person as opposed to many–which is more often than not unsuccessful) and throughout the book, the outdated term "Multiple Personality Disorder" or MPD was used–it's been changed to Dissociative Identity Disorder. Both multiples in the book suffered from child abuse, which is encouraging stereotypes.

But, the protagonist was shown as completely sane and capable, a huge step up from books such as "Sybil" and "When Rabbit Howls." He did have a "soul" who was violent, but for the most part was able to stop him from doing anything dangerous. There were barely any dominance struggles. And, best of all, the souls were shown as separate people as opposed to figments of the protagonist's imagination or mere fragments of his personality.

In short, while it does have its flaws, "Set This House In Order" is in my opinion one of the most accurate portrayals of multiplicity in modern fiction. It was also a captivating and very enjoyable read. show less