At one point I was burnt out on the sci-fi I was reading and searched out some different recommendations. “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” came up from someone. It’s not sci-fi, it’s kind of an out-there fiction novel, and very much not western. I felt about it the way that I felt after going to an avante garde musical performance at MoMA years ago: way beyond my level of appreciation. This book is better than that performance, and at least with this book I can recognize that it’s fascinating, creative, pushing the boundaries… and also simply not for me.
Publisher’s Summary
Information is everything in “Hard-Boiled Wonderland”. A specialist encrypter is attacked by thugs with orders from an unknown source, is chased by invisible predators, and dates an insatiably hungry librarian who never puts on weight. In “The End of the World” a new arrival is learning his role as dream-reader. But there is something eerily disquieting about the changeless nature of the town and its fable-like inhabitants. Told in alternate chapters, the two stories converge and combine to create a novel that is surreal, beautiful, thrilling, and extraordinary.