KEY POINTS:
The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal
By Sean Dixon
(HarperCollins, $34.99)
This is the most unhinged book I've come across in a long time. It's so unusual that it wasn't until the latter stages that I was able to make up my mind whether I loved or loathed it.
The Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women's Book Club isn't your conventional gathering of literature lovers. The members meet in a semi-derelict warehouse and are so passionate about the stories they read that they endeavour to live within them by re-enacting key passages.
The club's members are an eccentric lot - most especially Runner Coghill, who suggests the club reads one of the earliest works of literary fiction, the Mesopotamian heroic poem The Epic Of Gilgamesh, a copy of which she owns - not in book form but engraved on ancient stone tablets.
I don't want to give away too much of the plot, but suffice to say that re-enacting the Gilgamesh story leads to no end of chaos for the Lacuna Cabal and their male hangers-on.
Members die or go missing and the story culminates in a mad dash across opens seas to consult a wise man.
There is much about this book that's surreal. For instance, one member of the Lacuna Cabal has stripes that change colour and size depending on her mood. Her lover has developed a small robot that takes artificial intelligence to another level.
And then the author mixes in an actual person, Salam Pax, the Baghdad Blogger, just to really throw the reader off balance.
This is a novel that can be read on two levels: as a playful and entertaining tale or as a clever reworking of myth and legend.
First-time author Dixon, a Canadian actor, director and playwright, has taken ancient Sumerian stories and overlaid them with a modern, almost bloggy narrative that echoes the same themes - universal issues such as war and peace; love and loss; the search for truth, happiness and identity.
It's not a book for everyone - in fact, Dixon seems to take a wicked delight in polarising his readers.
If you're irritated by constant footnotes and referencing, in-jokes, overt quirkiness and narrators who constantly explain how they're stitching a story together, then stay away from the Lacuna Cabal.
Ditto anyone who objects to regular and largely gratuitous bursts of sexual crudeness.
Only hook up with this mad, bad and dangerous-to-know book club if you're looking for originality, smart humour and an offbeat tale that takes you on an extraordinary and unexpected journey. Then, like me, you'll end up loving it.
