Book Log 2017 #3: Arcadia by Iain Pears

So I made a comment about not reading a lot of fantasy works when talking about The Library at Mount Char. I should probably remove it, as I jumped pretty heavily back into fantasy with this book, where a former intelligence agent is writing a novel set in a Tokeinish world, only to find that a neighbor girl, while chasing his cat, runs through a portal in the basement that takes her to a world very much like the one he's writing about. The book then progresses through various worlds, from the present to the world of the book to a dystopic future to earlier and later versions of the present. It's not as confusing as it sounds.

Pears is an excellent writer who avoids genre classification - most of the books I've read of his are contemporary art crime stories - though he did display a knack for this kind of writing with An Instance of the Fingerpost, which is a Rashamon-style retelling of a murder in 17th century England. Both books are well worth reading, but give yourself ample time, as both are long and will require concentration (just because I said it wasn't as confusing as it sounds doesn't mean it's not confusing at all).