The ending is what makes this book so satisfying. Fools is a novel about personality, how much is your own and how much is grafted on to you without your knowledge. Like Pat’s other work, Fools is gritty and witty, pumped up on technology (high) and grifters (low). What she doesn’t explore here–things like the actual workings of a mindplaying theatre group or the morality of being a Brain Police (shades of Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly?)–just goes to show how much work and thought went into this book. It’s a confusing book, kind of like reading Sybil except all the characters are multiple personalities. And it’s the ending–the tying up of what (might have) went before into a coherent statement–that pushes this puppy to the top.

[Finished 12 January 1993]