Fool on the Hill: A Novel by Matt Ruff Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Fool on the Hill: A Novel
Book Review: Good Against Evil, love and Dogs
Summary: 4 Stars
The basic premise of this book is the good, old-fashioned tale of Good against Evil. The back drop of the world of academia,which some say is already removed from reality, gived Matt Ruff free range to follow the tangents in his head. The result is a novel of mystic qualities that you loose yourself in. If you like escapism, and dogs, this is the book for you. And, Mr Ruff, when are you going to write another one?....Book Review: Intricately spun fairy tale.
Summary: 5 Stars
"You GOTTA read this book," a friend and soon-to-be fellow-Cornellian said with some urgency when he learned that I had enrolled at Cornell University a couple of years ago. Devouring the book almost in one piece once I had started to read it, I soon understood what he meant. While this is not a book "about" Cornell - it just uses the campus and its own magic as a setting - I have to confess that there is a certain nostalgia to reading about the Arts Squad, McGraw Tower and The Hill (everyone who has walked up to the campus at least once knows why this noun deserves capitalization) and not only being able to visualize the scenery but also to drift off into your own memories of the place. This book is a fast-pace, hilarious tour de force interweaving fairy tales of modern-day humans, animals communicating by telepathy, ancient sprites and elfs and, of course, dragons - even if you're just using Cornell as your setting, there's gotta be a dragon in there somewhere.
Borrowing from virtually every writer from Shakespeare and Tolkien to the late 20th-century humorists, Ruff nevertheless manages to forge a style of his own and, in the process, conjures up a cast of funny, tragic and always highly unique and memorable characters - from Mr. Sunshine, the Greek Original who oversees and occasionally meddles with the development of the story, to Luther, the lovable, tragicomic canine hero in search of heaven, the Bohemian students, who enter the story with a bang in small-town Pennsylvania, and of course S.T. (St.) George, the hero and would-be dragon-slayer. -You may find some of these characters two-dimensional; you may even find the book's ending predictable; but I'll wager that you'll conclude that this hardly matters. This is, above all, a fairy tale and a farce, not a political satire or a high-brow tale on morals.
So, let the book's magic touch you and let its elfs and sprites enchant you, join Luther and his tailless Manx friend Blackjack on their journey from New York City to heaven (or its closest approximation in Ithaca, NY), root for the Bohemians in their dispute with the Rat Frat, and watch George withstand Mr. Sunshine's meddling in his conquest of Aurora Borealis.
If it is true that Matt Ruff in later years disavowed this book, it would appear that Mr. Sunshine has done a bit of meddling here, too - ever since becoming an underground hit shortly after its publication, "Fool on the Hill" has developed an extremely loyal audience and a life of its own, and there's an obvious reason for this. For once, Mr. Sunshine's meddling was actually for the good... and I sincerely wish he's going to leave it at that. This book deserves all the success it has had and more!