Right off the bat, this book captures the heart-sweepingly bleak atmosphere of the Upper Midwest. As a ten year resident of the region I can attest to the sort of soft communication people engage in around here, and how disorienting it can be. Ifentity is an odd thing. Memory is thick up here, infused into the landscape. I am almost a little scared of this novel because I can feel the emotional investment it will require of readers. The tone feels like a cross between a David Cronenberg film and an Ozu Yasujiro film, a heady and fertile mix full of unspoken tension and heaving under the weight of hidden memories, obscured pasts, paranoia, nightmares...and love. True to the landscape, dark and hard love seem to underpin the narrative.