The Exquisite by Laird Hunt

The Exquisite by Laird Hunt is experimental and noir and dreamy and disturbing and complex and dark and hilarious and is one of the most enjoyable and thrilling books I've read since I started this blog. Now and then when I was reading it I had to put it down and it was physically painful to do so because I really wanted to devour the entire thing all at once, but it was mentally necessary to get away from it because, damn.

Plus, the cover totally rules.

Bud Parr suggests (some quantity of possible-spoiler level info in that review, not necessarily in a giving-away-the-ending sense but which, if you're like me, you might still be happier avoiding until after you've read the novel) that the book might be appropriate for fans of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Alejandro Amenábar's Open Your Eyes (remade as Vanilla Sky). Matthew Tiffany seems to recall the book being compared to Cloud Atlas. I'd say those are fair comparisons. I'll go a step further: if you're at all interested in the intersection of experimental narrative and fantastic story-telling, then you should read this book. Hell, even if you're only interested in one or the other, you should still give it a shot.

If you're at all interested in reading the book--and you should be--then you might not want to read any more reviews. If you know what I mean, then you know what I'm driving at: half the fun of this sort of book is experiencing it raw for the first time, of finding out what sort of book it is as you read it. But at the same time, I'll say I suspect the book doesn't exhaust itself after a first reading. There's plenty here I look forward to re-reading. Plenty here that I suspect will gain additional resonance during future readings.

Plus I'm also totally looking forward to re-reading the opening story of Kelly Link's Stranger Things Happen because Hunt's book explicitly references Link's book. So you might want to pick up a copy of that, too, when you place your order. Or, if you're already a fan of Ms. Link, then, well, go read Hunt's book. Now.

Other items of note: Laird Hunt has an author's Web site and a blog. MetaxuCafe.com is throwing an Exquisite Party in NYC on September 17 where you can meet Hunt; I would totally go if I lived a couple states closer. The Exquisite is published by Coffee House Press, who also published Sleep, an anthology of short stories by Stephen Dixon which has been on my TBR pile for some time now.