A review by jramzthethird
In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell

5.0

Stunning, challenging, and all-around beautiful. Never before have I read a novel so rife with poetry, imagery and arcane magic bursting and leaking from every one of its crevices. The sole fault of the thing may be that it's story is too confined unto itself, but that's an inherent fault given the type of tale Bell tells: marriage is blissful freedom at best and feeling marooned on a desert island at worst, and that speaks of this book as well. We need more writers like Bell: scribes unafraid to put humanity's most animal natures under a microscope to pluck them apart with fanged, honest poetry. This novel reminded me of the power of words, and why nothing else quite compares to the shared imagination-relationship formed of reading a book.