The 2003 James Tiptree, Jr. Award: Winner

Summary | Winner | Short List

JURY

Michael Marc Levy (ML), Vicki Rosenzweig (VR), Lori Selke (LS), Nisi Shawl (NS), Maureen Kincaid Speller (MKS)

Matt Ruff Set This House In Order: A Romance Of Souls
Harper Collins Author's Site

Andy Gage is dead. Andrew Gage, a 26-year-old born two years ago, is in charge of Andy's body, while his father, Aaron, runs the house he built inside it ...

The truth, as Set This House in Order's characters keep telling one another, is complicated. Andy, Andrew, Aaron and the house's hundred or so other inhabitants are "alters," to use a psychiatric term. They are the multiple personalities that arose after repeated incidents of childhood abuse shattered Andy's sense of self. Instead of attempting to reintegrate them all, Aaron, a dominant personality, has constructed a stable inner landscape, a common gathering spot. The various alter characters act as if it's a real place, though the concept's not a scientifically proven model for treatment either inside or outside of the novel. This leads to the book's slipstream feel.

Andrew carefully allots time in control of the body to genteel Aunt Sam, childish Jake, mall-loving Simon and others. The inclusion of both male and female alters in his community of self reflects the experience of real-life multiples and forms a solid basis for Matt Ruff's daring treatment of gender issues and expectations. - NS


A number of books and stories this year did fascinating things with gender and several of them were extremely well written, but Matt Ruff's Set This House in Order combines literary quality with gender exploration in an unparalleled manner. The subtitle of the book, A Romance of Souls, tells the reader that what s/he's reading is fantasy-multiple personality syndrome doesn't really work this way-but everything is so well constructed, so believable, that it becomes difficult to see the book as anything other than a realistic novel concerning the way MPS actually works, or at least would work if the universe were a more remarkable place than it really is. Andy Gage and Penny Driver, the souls who spend the majority of their time as the public faces of the two multiples at the center of this story, are characters we really care about despite, or perhaps because of their various tics and eccentricities. The dozen or so other souls that we get to know over the course of the novel, some of them mere partials, are also well drawn, as are the supposedly normal secondary characters. Ruff's exploration of what the interior, virtual reality world of a multiple might be like, the "House" of the title, is particularly fascinating. This is a rich and wonderful novel that brings a truly fantastic world to vibrant life. -- ML


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