Archer's Goon, by Diana Wynne Jones
The first time I read Archer's Goon, I had to take notes.
You should conclude from this, not that it's terribly complicated, but that I was quite young and had a hard time keeping things straight. Specifically, who was in charge of what. You see, the town this novel takes place in appears to be run by a group of siblings, who have divided up amongst themselves all the different aspects of life and society. It isn't a government; government is one of the things that got divvied up. They call it "farming." As in, Dillian farms law and order, while her sister Shine farms the criminal element.
Which the family of Howard Sykes finds out the hard way when they get on the wrong side of these siblings. It starts with a Goon showing up in their kitchen, saying that Archer sent him, and that Archer wants his two thousand. Two thousand what? Not pounds, as you might assume. No, it turns out that for years now, Howard's father Quentin has written two thousand words every three months and sent them off to a guy named Mountjoy, supposedly as a means of dealing with a bad case of writer's block. The words are nothing: random drivel, whatever comes out of his head. Only now it seems there's more to the words than that, because not just Archer but all of his siblings are taking a particular interest in them.
What results is something of a household siege. Quentin, exasperated with the whole situation (and rightly suspicious of the whole thing), refuses to write any more words for anybody, so that he and his family find themselves on the receiving end of everybody's displeasure. While the Goon sits in the kitchen, obstinately demanding two thousand new words for Archer, the street gets torn up, bills come due, and a marching band does its very best to march down the street that isn't really there anymore. Howard, in the meantime, must figure out what in the name of all that's printed is going on in this town -- who these siblings are, how they came to have control over these things, and what the words are really used for.
The five Diana Wynne Jones books I recommended before this one are my five favorites, but this one sits in about the first-and-a-halfth tier, not quite a favorite, but a step above all the second-tier books. I get something slightly different from each one, and in this case what I get are the vivid personalities of all the characters: something Jones is good at anyway, but which particularly shines here. From Howard's sister Awful to his father Quentin and mother Catriona, from Fifi the live-in student to the Goon who parked himself among them without any invitation at all, and most especially the siblings who run the town, everybody here is larger than life in one way or another. I don't care as much about the plot in this book; what I care about is watching the characters get there. It's always a fun ride.