Mr. Splitfoot

Reading this felt like a weird fever dream. A few of the other reviews say the same thing, and it's pretty apt. It's weird, kind of confusing, a little funny, a little touching, a little brilliant. The writing is pretty great, in my opinion, and I cared about these strange, complicated characters a lot more than I thought I would.

I can't put my thoughts into words all that well, not with this book. It took reaching the last page for me to really appreciate everything that had come before.

I think I liked this? It was like a weird but mostly enjoyable dream. Side note: upstate NY what's in your water?! There's so many cults/weird religious movements up there.

Right, so. I was expecting some more ghost bits, maybe some slight creep. There is really very little creep here. It is soooo literary fiction. It is also manic pixie dream book. So it is a testament to the author that I actually bothered to finish it (though early on I did contemplate dropping it).

So, a litfic trope: Two converging storylines–one taking place nearly a decade and a half ago, detailing the misadventures of Ruth and her adopted boy sister Nat; the other, more current story arc detailing the walking roadtrip Ruth drags her very pregnant, existential crisis-ing niece on through New York State.

There is sweet, new romance; weird, almost magical-realism non-plot elements; strange characters; and a cult.

Mostly, this was decently enjoyable. The parts with Ruth and her niece sometimes bored me. The subplot of Ceph was half-baked. The end sort of fell apart and became rather anticlimactic. But there were some lovely bits too, some lovely paragraphs, and some lovely things that happened between the characters. So it wasn't a waste of time. Just don't expect it to be the best thing you've ever read. Keep your expectations low or non-existent. Don't assume anything, and it will be much easier to read.