Another wonderful combination of gothic mystery, biting satire, and tenderness. Bonus for English majors: a painfully hilarious parody of Lacanian analysis.

On its way to mdhistorian, at last.

When it comes to Jonathan Coe, I amtorn between admiration and suspicion. On the one hand, _House of Sleep_ is an impressive Rube Goldberg contraption: the plot has lots of hidden levers and loops, but the it keeps moving forward and you can’t help but be impressed with the author’s ability to construct such a machine (even if he does require an improbable deus ex machina to get himself out of one jam – I’ll leave it to you to decide whether it was necessary at all). On the other hand, you’re never quite sure what all the tricks and twists are in aid of. The House of Sleep, a drafty Victorian house a cliff in a sad British seaside town, is the setting for four characters’ explorations of consciousness. Is sleep a trick the body plays on the mind to get some downtime?, Coe seems to ask, Or is the state of being awake itself an illusion of the mind? But these questions don’t really seem to go anywhere; I particularly missed Coe’s usual interest in politics, a natural topic for a book about consciousness set in the Thatcher years. Still, it’s good fun watching him keep all those plots turns straight!

This one went off to Lorelei03 this morning -- enjoy!

Rcvd earlier this nmonth, but due to a death in my family, have only gotten to journalling now. Sorry and thanks very much mdhistorian!

Sending off as a RABCK to another BCer.