Praise for The Shoe on the Roof
“Ferguson is a skillful and original writer, and over all, the novel is full of life. . . . The Shoe on the Roof’s lasting strength is in such sly jabs at the “alternative facts” and deep divisions we’re now reckoning with, making it a tale for the times.”
Description
Meet Thomas Rosanoff: med student and researcher.
Meet his subjects: three homeless men who believe they are God.
Ever since his girlfriend ended things, Thomas’s life has been on a downward spiral. A gifted medical student, he has spent his entire adulthood struggling to escape the legacy of his father, an esteemed psychiatrist who used him as a test subject when he was a boy. Thomas lived his entire childhood watched over by researchers lurking behind one-way glass.
But now the tables have turned. Thomas is the researcher, and he’s convinced an experiment he has concocted will cure three homeless men of their delusional claims. When the experiment careens out of control, however, Thomas is forced to confront the voices echoing in his own head and the ghosts of his own past.
An explosively imaginative tour de force, The Shoe on the Roof questions our definitions of sanity and madness while exploring the magical reality that lies just beyond the world of scientific fact.
Reviews
“The Shoe on the Roof is often laugh-out-loud funny despite its serious and tragic underpinnings. But it’s also thought-provoking, occasionally violent and will likely stay with readers long after the last page is read.”
“Absurdly funny.”
“Another gem from this Giller Prize-winning author.”
