In the Name of the Father by Balla

Vladimir Balla is a Slovak writer, much celebrated in his homeland and often referred to as the Slovak Kafka. 

Full disclosure: it's now a couple of months since I read this novel, and I really can't remember that much about it. Mind you that says a lot, I read it after Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and that is indelibly printed on my memory.

In the Name of the Father is a wandering novel, or more of a novella really, about a man who builds a house, with a labyrinth in the cellar which stretches under the town and in the floor of which is secreted the tree of life.

It's all very absurd, but lacked any kind of depth or sparkle to draw me in.

There was nothing wrong with the book, per se, but it didn't really have anything going for it either. 

So ★★★☆☆ it is.