Fourth Mansions

Wow, folks...this book. This book. This is the second novel I've read of his, with many short stories and a few essays in between. Fourth Mansions is the most like reading a really good Lafferty story, somehow maintaining the intensity and light-yet-deadly tone, and still remaining cohesive as a novel. Lafferty isn't for everyone--his style and dialog either charm & delight you or annoy & exhaust you--and while this may or may not be his best work, it is certainly the most HIS. I'm dazzled.

Foley is the normal human POV character, as Lafferty gives us a quick tour of the mental framework of St. thereasa of Avila. The three thrusts of her argument for human progress to knowing God are set up as warring groups in this rather psychedelic treatment of the destiny of mankind. I think this book is more interesting to the engineers among us than the philosophers.