There may be something wrong with a book that requires an explanatory note from the publisher at the end just so you can figure it out. I read this book because it was supposed to shed some insight into what’s going on in the TV show Lost, and indeed, there are several parallels. There is a strange world that doesn’t operate according to the laws of physics. There is an underground place where a mysterious substance called omnium produces whatever you like, much like Lost’s “magic box.” There are also three strange-looking policemen who are obsessed with bicycles and taking meaningless recordings, who make their police barracks inside a two-dimensional house and the walls of a mansion, and who tend to describe difficult things as “a pancake” (whereas pancakes are actually very easy). If you’re looking for clarification, you won’t find it here, I’m afraid.

I do get that hell is repetition, and this is O’Brien’s vision of hell. While I don’t find the book to be particularly funny, despite its description as a comic novel, it is, despite its absurdity, very readable, and that’s what saves it for me. I may not understand everything that’s going on, but I do want to find out what happens next. How it all relates to the endless footnotes about the fictional wacko philosopher de Selby, who is the obsession of the no-name narrator—well, maybe I’ll let someone else figure that out.