"We are not meant to understand" — Robert Coover's OPEN HOUSE reviewed by Times Literary Supplement

"All novelists have to come up with their version of the rules that allow them to play the game. Mostly what readers want from a book is the outcome of that game, but there are writers such as Robert Coover who are more interested in the rules. In his story “The Babysitter” (1969), he imagines what happens when a couple go to a party, leaving a teenage girl to look after their kids. Writing in distinctive self-contained paragraphs, he sketches out various possibilities (most of them involving violence and sex) and makes no effort to tie them into a coherent whole. It is the kind of story that is taught in creative writing workshops (at least it used to be), because it shows what you can do if you ignore some of those rules – rather like teaching young tennis players to forget the lines so they can learn to hit the ball with their full strength." 

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