In an unknown, somewhat eerie city, in a building known only (and ominously) as The Agency, a finicky, committed-to-following-his-daily-routine clerk named Charles Unwin works for a famous detective named Sivart, writing up Sivart’s cases from the notes he’s been given. And yet, for all it may resemble, The Manual of Detection is entirely original. Berry’s novel is an amalgam of all of the above-literary fiction, fantasy, and mystery its pages echo with tributes to the writing of Borges, of Calvino, of Kafka, and of some of Paul Auster’s works. I certainly don’t love them all, but I sure enjoyed this one, enormously. It’s also true that with books that push against the boundaries of any particular genre (be it literary fiction, fantasy, or mysteries), readers tend to either love them or hate them. When you’re talking about books like Berry’s, you find yourself mostly resorting to making comparisons with better-known titles and authors. Somehow, Berry’s novel is neither this nor that: the plot is not straightforward the setting is surreal yet oddly familiar, the characters are types (detective, girl Friday, villain) but so individualized that they’re difficult to forget. It’s the sort of fiction that is really impossible to characterize with any accuracy.

Jedediah Berry’s The Manual of Detection is a prime example of one of those peculiar and intriguing novels that occasionally come across my desk.

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