A tree falls over outside his home, and Alden Dennis Weer wakes to find that he's had a stroke, and that he's able to wander freely through his own memories. His wanderings around his property and through the recesses of his own mind move at a leisurely pace as he recounts the the struggles and Christmas surprises of his youth and growing up in a small town, his fumbles with love, and his wealthy old age, after he had made his fortune. ...But doesn't it seem like something is missing, from this story?

This was a reread for me, of a book that I try to revisit once every couple years. Gene Wolfe is known for his unreliable narrators and puzzle-box stories, and Peace is probably my favorite. Neil Gaiman famously described it as just being a gentle midwest memoir on first reading, but that it had become a horror story by the third. There is certainly something dark lurking beneath the surface here, and it's fascinating to me that there's no concrete answer as to what. There's one element that is largely agreed on regardless of interpretation, but to this day readers each see the events as spinning off in wholly different directions, leading to completely different resulting stories. Every time I've revisited Peace, it has been a new mystery for me. Yes, I know who and what Weer is, but is that all that he is? I will never have an answer, but the question keeps me coming back more than any answer could.