The House Of Rumour by Jake Arnott

Jake Arnott is one of Britain's best novelists.  His books have a huge fan following and several have been made into major TV dramas.  In The House Of Rumour, he takes the reader on an intriguing journey through the twentieth century as he attempts to reconcile the nature of the world with the glimpses of other worlds each of us instinctively feels.

The reader is taken through the early stages of rocket propulsion, the rise of the hippie cults and philosophies in the sixties and seventies, the spy games that went on below the surface in World War II, the rise of science fiction, Jonestown, the heyday of B-movies about alien abductions, the Cuban revolution and the later raft migration of those revolutionaries to Florida, the long mysterious story of Rudolph Hess and the study of the occult.  These worlds are seen through the unifying thread of the story of Larry Zagorski, a young boy fascinated by the emerging science fiction scene, who went on to fight in World War II as a fighter pilot, and returned to make a living writing fiction and working for movies.  Larry was at the fringes of many of these stories and spent his life trying to work out what was reality and what was just the appearance.  Is this world merely a hologram or a figment of someone's imagination?

Arnott has created a fascinating look at the nature of the world through the myriad stories that he weaves together in this novel.  He is reminiscent of David Mitchell, Don Delillo, and John Barth as he creates a world that the reader will be mesmerized by.  The book could have used some editing as some threads seem to go on too long or not entirely mesh with others, but this is a masterpiece of literature that the reader will not soon forget.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction and those interested in the nature of the world.