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I'm not a huge fan of long novels. This one, however, was without a doubt worth the time.

Mother and son over the long haul, Faye and Samuel - a great unfolding and refolding of their relationship. Seriously talented storytelling at play here. Samuel, an oddly compelling and sympathetic character, a teacher struggling to get his act together. Faye, a woman somewhat off the wall for decades for good reasons and bad, an agent of cultural change with vexed measure of responsibility. There are a number of dizzying story lines that are shuffled together at a perfect pace with no loss of balance. Totally surprising, Hill masterfully used an online game called World of Elfscape with characters worthy of entire book for themselves. Remarkable! The reader gets to travel back to Norway in the 1940's, very cool, and other locales and time periods. There are many lesser characters all over the place that easily earned their time on the pages. The writing style varies with great success; almost as if there were multiple authors working together to produce this story. The occasional bouts of ranting in the book were fantastic material that took me slightly out of the action for a perfect position to reflect on the ongoing story; to the effect of pulling me in deeper and deeper.

After finishing the story, I feel I was played by Hill; played like some sort instrument capable of everything from Classical to Rock and Roll and anything else that will move your blood or shake you up the way you like - and have you willing to go on tour to wherever there is a call for music.

This book was intelligent, engrossing, and hands-down solid entertainment. A very memorable book. Nathan Hill is a writer to reckon with. I can't wait to get my hands on his next book.