Synopses & Reviews
In this epic, mythical debut novel, a newly-wed couple escapes the busy confusion of their homeland for a distant and almost-uninhabited lakeshore. They plan to live there simply, to fish the lake, to trap the nearby woods, and build a house upon the dirt between where they can raise a family. But as their every pregnancy fails, the child-obsessed husband begins to rage at this new world: the song-spun objects somehow created by his wife's beautiful singing voice, the giant and sentient bear that rules the beasts of the woods, the second moon weighing down the fabric of their starless sky, and the labyrinth of memory dug into the earth beneath their house.
This novel, from one of our most exciting young writers, is a powerful exploration of the limits of parenthood and marriage — and of what happens when a marriage’s success is measured solely by the children it produces, or else the sorrow that marks their absence.
Review
"There is a power here that is almost overwhelming. The force of the writing is derived from something elemental and primal. Unlike anything I have read in a long time.” Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
Review
"Matt Bell does not write sentences — he writes spells. He is not a novelist — he is a mystic. This book, which will grip you in an otherworldly trance, reads like something divined from tea leaves or translated from a charcoal cipher on a cave wall." Benjamin Percy, author of Red Moon and The Wilding
Review
"In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods is a big, slinking, dangerous fairy tale, the kind with gleaming fangs and blood around the muzzle and a powerful heart you can hear thumping from miles away. The story's ferocity is matched by Matt Bell's glorious sentences: sinuous and darkly magical, they are taproots of the strange." Lauren Groff, author of Arcadia
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“This is a fiercely original book — at once intimate and epic, visceral and philosophical — that sent me scurrying for adjectives, for precedents, for cover. Matt Bell commands the page with bold, vigorous prose and may well have invented the pulse-pounding novel of ideas.” Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins
Review
“Bell puts the fable in fabulism....This spare, devastating novel...is as beautiful as it is ruinous. A tragedy of fantastic proportions, the book’s musical, often idiosyncratic prose will carry its readers into an unfamiliar but unforgettable world." Library Journal, Starred Review
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“Challenging, boldly experimental.” Publishers Weekly
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“Matt Bell’s visionary debut novel In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and Woods is one of the most singularly strange and beautiful and wondrous books to come along in a long time....[Bell] has invented an entirely new rhetoric of fiction and marked unique territory of his own.” Tin House
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“In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods...has an impressive wealth to share with its reader...it’s a gorgeous, bottomless book.” Ploughshares
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“One of the year’s best novels....Bell keeps the narrative evolving, shifting groundrules and revealing more about his setting and characters. Disorienting and evocative, this is a fantastic reading experience.” Vol 1. Brooklyn
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“Meticulously designed, with a particular focus on the musicality of its sentences...an unflinching portrait of the struggle to keep a family intact.” Kirkus Review
Review
In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods is a terrifying and wonderful fable that has nestled itself somewhere deep inside my shoulder blades. I have never come across a book that is so close to a dream state, with all the wildness and wonder and transfiguration that implies.” Flavorwire (Staff Pick)
About the Author
Matt Bell's first story collection was How They Were Found. In 2012, Cataclysm Baby, a novella, was published by Mud Luscious Press. Bell's fiction has been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories 2010, Best American Fantasy 2, and 30 Under 30: An Anthology of Innovative Fiction by Younger Writers, and shortlisted in Best American Short Stories 2010 and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He serves as Senior Editor at Dzanc Books and teaches writing at Northern Michigan University. This is his first novel.