Fool's Run, Patricia A. McKillip
Fool's Run is billed as McKillip's first science fiction novel, but the writing holds true to her usual poetic style. A band is recruited to play a rehabilitative concert at an offworld prison where the most dangerous offenders of human society are kept. They get involved with a visionary (or mad?) mass murderer and an array of personal problems that surface from the past.
I usually think of books in how they reference to other things I've read. This book reminds me of Joan Vinge's novels (most of them, at least) in its "underground" setting and archetypal characters. What it most reminds me of, however, are McKillip's other novels. She is a master of the dreamlike novel. Her novels are populated with characters who are unsure of the future and haunted by the past, and Fool's Runis no exception. The strategy extends by having the true names of only 2 of the band members being known to the reader, and this is only revealed a good way into the plot. The names that are given to the reader have a symbolic message. In fact, symbolism permeates the novel to the point of having the characters discuss symbolism.
I do recommend this book if you like McKillip's other novels. If it's your first introduction to her work, it's a bit misleading as she has never written anything else (to my knowledge) in a science-fictional setting. It's not as forbidding a book as her more recent novels.