Set This House In Order: A Romance Of Souls

Author: Matt Ruff

Matt Ruff isn't exactly a mainstream writer, his previous novels, Fool on the Hill and Sewer, Gas & Electric were both overtly works of the fantastic, but Set This House in Order seems mainstream. At least it has a realist, contemporary setting, and it deals with a genuine psychological disorder. But one of the things that science fiction does is make the metaphorical, real, and that's exactly what Ruff does in this novel. It is a common metaphor for multiple personality disorder to talk about it as several different people inside the head. For Andy Gage, his personality splintered as a result of childhood abuse, and in order to lead a moderately ordinary life he imagines all the different personalities occupying a large house inside his head. Different personalities emerge to deal with particular situations, and the calmer ones tend to keep the more disturbed personalities in order. It's not perfect, but it works. Then Andy meets Penny, who also suffers multiple personality disorder, though she is only dimly aware of it, and doesn't have the different characters working in the way that Andy does. Or at least, he thinks he does. But when Penny asks for his help in coping with her own problems, he discovers a secret inside the house inside his head that the different personalities have been keeping from him. Set This House in Order won the James Tiptree Award. It is a superb example of the way science fiction can take a complex and difficult issue and render it comprehensible and moving simply by making the metaphors concrete.