Give yourself room, time and expectation to read I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS twice. At least. Even after the second time through, you may love or hate this debut novel by Iain Reid, either because you understand what has happened within its pages or you still do not have a clue.

While beautifully written and a one-sit read by design, it is a puzzle. Indeed, it is so much so that Reid’s publisher has ever-so-thoughtfully created a website for those who wish to comment on and discuss the work, what happens with it, and, in the end, what it all means. It has been great fun --- after reading it, of course --- to visit the site occasionally (and no, I’m not giving it to you. Buy the book and read it, and then you can have it) and watch the arguments, discussions and opinions pitch and yaw, back and forth, up and down. It’s almost as wild a ride as the book itself, which, I think, is intentional.

"The strangest thing for me about the book is that even now I can’t tell you in sum whether I liked it or not. It continues to haunt me, in ways good, bad and indifferent, days after reading it. I’m not sorry I read it, but I don’t know if it’s for everyone."

The majority of I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS is told in the voice of an unnamed young woman who has been dating her boyfriend, Jake, for about a month. As the story proper opens, the couple is driving to Jake’s boyhood home to have dinner with his parents. This gives the reader a chance to get to know them both, primarily through their conversation, which is tedious but telling, and the woman’s thoughts. She is unsure about the relationship, about meeting Jake’s parents, about everything, really. I was reminded just a bit of the first half-hour of the film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper’s original), where one is waiting, seemingly interminably, for something to happen. Meanwhile, there are a couple of short interludes that interrupt the narrative and appears to have nothing to do with the story.

Note well: Those opening pages are the ascending climb of the roller coaster, which begins to clip the apex of the track once they get to Jake’s parents’ home. The woman is not a country girl, by any means, and is a bit unsettled by what is represented to her by Jake as a part of everyday rural living. What is inside the house --- including Jake’s parents --- ranges from slightly off to unsettling, all the way to downright weird. That’s before dinner. It gets worse and worse. The night, as seen through the narrator’s eyes, is going to go places that she never would have anticipated in some ways. Yet, in other ways, we learn that what ultimately occurs was more or less inevitable.

The strangest thing for me about the book is that even now I can’t tell you in sum whether I liked it or not. It continues to haunt me, in ways good, bad and indifferent, days after reading it. I’m not sorry I read it, but I don’t know if it’s for everyone. And yet I would compare it favorably to a book published several years ago that I loved, but if I reveal the title, it will give away the ending. That would be unfair to you, the reader, and particularly to Reid, who I’m sure labored mightily to make the construct of this shapeshifting novel look easy. It’s short enough and interesting enough that you should read it, just so you’ll know what people will be talking about.