A Floating Life

by Tad Crawford

Following a harrowing job interview in a steam room, a nameless narrator leaves his youthful dreams behind. He finds himself at a party talking to a woman he doesn’t know, who proves to be his wife. Soon separated from her but still living in the same apartment, he is threatened by a litigious dachshund and saddled with a stubborn case of erectile dysfunction in a world that seems held together by increasingly mercurial laws and elusive boundaries. His relationship deepens with an elderly Dutch model maker named Pecheur, whose miniature boats are erratically offered for sale in a hard-to-find shop called The Floating World. Enlivened by Pecheur’s dream to tame the destructive forces of nature, the narrator begins to find his bearings.

With quiet humor, A Floating Life charts the course of a middle-age crisis through images that surprise and disorient, leading to a “climax [that] resolves all satisfyingly and surprisingly” ( Booklist ). A Floating Life is a rollicking, unforgettable, and inventive journey—and it is also a source of insight, solace, and inspiration that will delight lovers of Kafka, Murakami, and Gabriel García Márquez.

Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Genres: Fiction, Magical Realism, Fantasy

304 pages, Paperback

First published August 6, 2012

About the author

My new novel, A Woman in the Wild, has just been published by Arcade Publishing (distributed by Simon & Schuster).
The novel tells of Thea, a psychologist in crisis who leaves her established practice in the city for an open-ended retreat in the mountains at the Institute for Healing and Transformation. Feeling lost, betrayed, and stricken by guilt not to have saved her daughter from sexual abuse, she hopes to find a new path to ease her pain and uncertainties. Soon after her arrival, a “wild” man who roamed the forest with a bear is brought to the institute. When the man is given to her care, she performs a suspenseful balancing as she seeks to heal him as well as herself. Hiking and meditating each day, she initiates an inner journey that shakes her free from the familiar. As the months pass, she engages her guilt and sorrow, confronts her failures, weighs the limits of therapy and self-forgiveness, and seeks to unleash the healing powers of the unconscious and of love.

I'm happy to do book clubs and library talks about the novel.

Reviews

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely enjoyed this read, though most of the time I felt like a lot of it went over my head. I quickly learned to just roll with it, since even the main character often admitted to being totally clueless about what was going on.
Trying to explain it presents a bit of a challenge. The book reads like segments of dreams. They sort of make sense as they happen, but an abbreviated retelling is just weird. I think this makes for a great book when you’re tired of the same genre. It is a bit like a literary pallet-cleanser for daring readers.

[Naberius · Rating 3 out of 5]

So this is what I thought about this book:

Strange. Odd. Unpredictable. Compelling. And what's the word for when you have a strange dream that you wake from, wondering if it had bits of the real in it, and unsure of what just happened? I don't know a word for that. It's difficult to articulate the reaction I had to reading this book. As you can see from the summary, the book has a nameless narrator who is in the middle of his life, going from situation to situation. There is a surrealism that runs through this book that reminded me of what I like about Jonathan Carroll's books -- that sense of feeling like you should know more about where you are, and who you're talking to, and what's going on, even as you're in the midst of something. I found I would start the book and stop, and then pick it up a day or two later --- it wasn't something that felt comfortable reading at a non-stop pace. What I mean is, I would periodically have to stop and just think about what I had just read, almost as if I had to center myself, so I could get a grasp on what was happening.

I think this is one of strengths of this book, even though at times it made me feel a bit off-balance. I sometimes have really realistic dreams, ones where I wake up and have an uneasy feeling because I'm not if I've been dreaming, or have been awake the whole time. Sometimes, this book gave me the same uneasiness because I felt like I couldn't get a good hold on it. I think it's just me .... maybe this book is over my head, and that's why I didn't have a clear connection to it.

I never did really feel a connection to the narrator, but maybe that's what's supposed to happen; maybe it's all an exercise in exploration, and stretching the boundaries of what you expect from a book. I never felt quite comfortable reading it, even while there were parts that I really enjoyed. I think if you're a reader who enjoys Kafka (and I do not, particularly), this book would really appeal to you. I found it an unusual book, but one which I'm not sure I'd come back to right away. I'm not giving the book a rating, as I really have no idea how I'd do it ---- it gets a great rating for the writing, which is superb. However, it didn't really resonate with me enough for me to say I loved it.

There are many reviews on Goodreads which are written much better than mine, so if this book sounds intriguing to you, I'd suggest checking out what those readers had to say.

[Nancy Freund · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my review of it at Necessary Fiction...
Many weeks later, I have to say I like the experience of reading this one even MORE.

Tad Crawford’s debut novel, A Floating Life, is a scattering of narrative puzzle pieces that fit together unexpectedly. They do not complete a single storyline image, but they are very satisfying to play with and seek points of connection.
An unnamed “everyman” character finds himself in a difficult job interview in an unlikely place. Unaware of his prior interest in the position, the details of his application, or the likely details of the job, he follows a hairy one-eyed man into a steam room to conduct the interview, naked, under the foggy gaze of the company’s head. We learn, along with our man, that he is interviewing to be sous-chef in a mafia-run enterprise, and he realizes he actually wants the job. His lie about cooking on a cruise ship imperils his candidacy, however, as the mafia boss detests water and anything related to it. He departs regretful, accepting the contact details of a friend from the kind-hearted chef.
Next, he finds himself at a party – unsure who the party is for or who he is speaking with. His female companion speaks incessantly about the failure of her marriage and the fact that she’s left a “Dear John” letter for her husband. Our man wants to escape this boring woman, but ultimately only does so when he later finds himself drunkenly vomiting in the host’s bathroom, and being put in a taxi. He returns home to find a “Dear John” letter from his wife. The woman enters the apartment, confirming her identity to both the reader and our man, and she demands a divorce. Our man must move to the guest room, and hide when the wife brings her dates home.
So far, the plot has been sprinkled with oddities in the life of an unreliable narrator. By the time our man goes to meet the one-eyed chef’s “contact” in his magical model boat shop known as The Floating World, unreliability has expanded well beyond our narrator. Many scenes that follow fracture realities further. Dogs talk, dancing bears hibernate in man-made Central Park caves and ascend for a jamboree with formal invitations, and the model boat maker, an elderly Dutchman, Pecheur, hires our man to help research the harnessing of water as a powerful resource against its own destructive nature. Through the relationship with Pecheur, our man becomes interested in historic ships and explorer Cheng Ho, who’d been a captive Mongol eunuch serving the Chinese. Our man questions Cheng Ho’s lack of sexuality and its possible results.
But what of sexual desire? Had that been lost to him irrevocably? Or had Cheng Ho’s sexual pleasure become diffuse, spread over all his skin, into his organs, to his bones? The blind hear with such intensity. Wouldn’t the skin of a eunuch be one hundred times more susceptible to pleasure than it was before the cleaning?
Our man visits doctors to cure his own erectile dysfunction. Oddly, he later awakens aboard a medical ship upon which he has apparently given birth and is breastfeeding his own son. Here it seems he has answered his own question – just as a blind man’s other senses are known to heighten and develop, our man’s inability to express his sexuality seems to have opened the door to the ultimate result of fully functioning sexuality in his sustaining a pregnancy and giving birth.
There are numerous references to the possibility of a man channelling his own sperm inward, his own flow of urine back into his body, fornicating with himself anally… suggestions that an ultimate goal of independence is indeed conceivable – if only for a time – and desirable.
What if I were both man and eunuch… wanting to enter myself, I would be willing to be entered… to experience both the pleasure of receiving and the pleasure of releasing.
The novel ends with a graphic example of our man saving his own life aboard a raft lost at sea, when he slits his wrist and drinks his own blood, slaking a terrible thirst. Our narrator may be unreliable, but he’s certainly resourceful, and he does indeed keep himself afloat.
To try to compare Crawford’s imaginative novel to those of other writers might do everyone a disservice. Each vignette is unique. The relationship between Pecheur and our man is certainly reminiscent of Paul Auster’s Moon Palace. So too, the Central Park caves. The fantasy plumbing of depths and instability of the narrative experience is much like Haruki Murakami’s writing in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. Even the beginning of the story, triggered by the main character’s failing marriage, is reminiscent of Murakami. The references to ancient Chinese and Japanese history – and more current history in these two cultures also earns Crawford a Murakami-fan’s respect. The many plays of light and dark, wanderings and boat journeys under night skies, add to the dream-state sequences our man seems to take in his stride. The archetypes of myth and Jungian tradition are found throughout. Crawford has also been compared to Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Kafka.
In one short vignette, seemingly unrelated to other scenes, our man finds himself desperate for a men’s room in a large school. Evidently he is being reviewed by a panel. The men’s room, when he finds it, is a large open room with many toilets, all of which has an obese, partially clad woman seated there. The women’s room is the same. He meets a youth and briefly discusses his theory of education – placing value on a learner-centric model and creativity – which the youth advises our man not to mention to the review panel. Our man ignores the warning and is slated by the strictly practical panel. The youth then helps our man find a toilet in the terrible school – laughing at the possibility that he may get caught, as has happened in the past.
I ran away. First they expelled me for poor attendance. Then when months went by and I didn’t show up, people got really upset.
It might be argued that this one ironic scene is Crawford’s direct message to any critics who’d accuse his narrative of being too unwieldy to serve the purpose of the novel. Indeed Publishers Weekly found the novel disjointed. Kirkus and Booklist, though, were considerably more open-minded — just what our man, the talking dogs and bears and elderly soldiers and magical light-bearing women and Tad Crawford might request.
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Tad Crawford is the author of the novel A Floating Life as well as The Secret Life of Money and a dozen other nonfiction books, chiefly on the business lives of artists and writers. His stories and articles have appeared in such venues as Art in America, The Café Irreal, Confrontation, Communication Arts, Family Circle, Glamour, Guernica, The Nation, and Writer’s Digest. Crawford is the founder and publisher of Allworth Press. He has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts award as well as the Graphic Artists Guild’s Walter Hortens Distinguished Service Award. He grew up in the artists’ colony of Woodstock, New York, and now lives in New York City.
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Nancy Freund is from New York, Kansas City, and London, and she currently lives in Lausanne, Switzerland. She studied at UCLA (B.A. English/Creative Writing and M.Ed.) Her poetry has been published in BloodLotus Journal and the Istanbul Review. She was Necessary Fiction’s Writer-in-Residence for September, 2012. Her novel Rapeseed will be published in September, 2013.

[Zoe Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I often read blogs, in which writers give advice to other writers. Some of the advice is good, some of it obvious and some of it suggests the writer has not read many books. One example of the latter sort of advice is “Don’t write about dreams.” Clearly that person has not read Lewis Carroll. And nor have s/he read Tad Crawford’s A Floating Life.

Like Alice in Wonderland the whole of Crawford’s book has a dreamlike quality. There are dreams in the book, but which sections are the central character’s dreams and which not is not always clear. As a bear says at one point “I spent a lot of time imagining who the dreams might belong to. Finally, I thought of you.”

Yes I did say “bear”. During the course of the book the narrator meets with a family of bears who live under Central Park, a litigious dachsund, Numun, an estate agent who offers him a golden cage in a building which is being built downwards, a World War II Japanese soldier and a modern Charon and Cerberus (and more as the Amazon description makes clear). As magic realism goes this is definitely on the magical/surrealist side. The dreams are edgy and often disturbing. There were times when I was reminded of the short stories of Karen Heuler.

The book does have realist elements. The narrator seems to be living a normal life working in marketing with a wife who is fed up with the fact that he hasn’t matured and who has decided to leave him. But even these elements are dealt with in a dreamlike way – he has a conversation with his wife at a party without recognizing her or apparently she him. The most realistic element is perhaps Pecheur and his model shop A Floating Life. The fantastic maritime scenes Pecheur displays are explained as computer programmed, engineered, modelled, although I doubt such programming is possible in real life. But Pecheur's displays have significance for the dreams and magic that follow.

I enjoyed this unusual book. It is strewn with symbolism - Jung would have had a field day. On writing this review I realise that I really ought to read it again to see what more I can find.

This review first appeared on http://www.magic-realism-books.blogsp...

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review originally appeared on my blog at http://thetop100bookclub.wordpress.co... - please join the community. I would love to hear from you.

I picked up this book solely on the pretext that it combines the styles of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Haruki Murakami to become an astounding work of magical realism. ‘A Floating Life’ reminded me a lot of ‘Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World’ in many respects, but I failed to see Gabriel Garcia Marquez in this work.

This unnamed narrator flits between scenarios in a haze of amnesiac confusion. The desire to change jobs, a wife who has left him, dealing with erectile dysfunction in the throes of middle age all come to the fore.

Perhaps this is simply not the style of book I am used to reading, but I failed to really see or feel the common, underlying link that brought the story together. No matter how much I wrack my brain, I am overwhelmed by how disorientating the storyline became. The alleged genius of the book is lost on me. I am, however, always hesitant to publish a negative review on someone’s work. At no point in the book did I consider putting it down, conquered by it. There are some really lovely elements to it, the messages and images that endure through the confusion that make me truly glad I persevered to the end – the very unique depiction of the brevity of life, regret, tenacity, survival. The image of the model ship shop, The Floating World, and his interactions with Pecheur were powerful and moving.

And so I walk away from this novel with some very fond thoughts on certain elements. Maybe I just didn’t get it...

[Peter Prasad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Huzzah Tad Crawford! If a series of Hieronymus Bosh paintings were turned into a novel, you might have half of what Tad Crawford has constructed in A Floating Life. The other half of this elegant novel touches on nautical exploration, self-sacrifice and service to others. Like a cork, we bounce through an examination of cultures, values and experiences that tug at the fabric of our imagination. Are these dreams? Serial portraits? Who cares – just jump in.

Expect your emotions to be stretched with Alice In Wonderland-like dialogs that dance with innuendo through a job interview, a marriage break-up, the emotional collapse of love into economic survival, the dark night of crossing the River Styx and Japanese ritual suicide. Sexuality, impotence, and role reversal are explored, even how a man can nurse a newborn baby. We savor dialog with divinity herself, a ruby earth mother named Numun.

If Jung was exploring a super consciousness, Crawford is not far behind. We are people adrift in cocktail party banter, paralleled by a survivalist drifting on a raft through storm-tossed seas. I was reminded of Hesse’s Steppenwolf and Mann’s Death in Venice, yet Crawford’s global appetite includes Taoist practice and tantric Buddhist realization. In this world, art seeps from the constrictions of convention and the rigidity of form into a font of healing that ripens the reader’s soul. Five stars.

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Speaking (or writing) as of the mythic, the absurd, the strange, or the monstrous can often be apt choices when trying to effectively illustrate one's ideas about things that are pedestrian, commonplace, and/or so normal as to avoid frequent examination. Such styles must be carefully employed to reveal specific truths by a writer who really knows what he's about. Tad Crawford knows what he's about and employs surrealism as well as good old-fashioned whimsy and weirdness to give the reader insight into the psychological journey of an ordinary man.

Also, you should know this book is full of wit -- don't worry about a narrative voice that takes itself too seriously to enjoy with this book. I was smiling uncontrollably by the beginning of the second chapter. Speaking of that chapter, one thing that bothered me is how clever I found the protagonist to be at improvising during his "job interview" (this is right at the beginning of the book -- no spoiler). I envy his skills; I know so much more in job interviews and am so much slower on my feet. Stop shaming me, Tad Crawford!

At least I don't pretend to be a novelist because Tad would make me a downright disgrace in that line of endeavor with this amazing book to measure my efforts against! I recommend this to all without reservation; it's as fun and smart as one could wish an unknown book to be.

BTW, I read this book as part of the Goodreads First Reads program.

[Eugenia · Rating 5 out of 5]

In “A Floating Life,” Tad Crawford offers us a smorgasbord of delights--an intriguing story that is both profound and whimsical, a mystery that doesn’t become a mystery until it’s solved; a morality tale that doesn’t moralize.

It’s a rich tapestry of life by a skilled weaver and philosopher, who has given much thought to the important issues of a life worth living-- love, friendship, and marriage; freedom and liberty; power and control; and growth of the human spirit. Perfect food for a book club, it will trigger spirited discussions about all these and more.

A great storyteller and master of the tall tale, Crawford entrances, seduces, and teases us with soul-searching riddles, serving them up to us on a silver platter full of whimsy and suspense. Unafraid to go wherever his inventive mind leads him, this creative illusionist takes us on a whirlwind in which the ordinary becomes bizarre, and vice versa. Although his book is a cornucopia of wisdom and messages, he never spoon feeds his readers but asks us to ‘taste’ the answers.

Seldom do I read a book more than once, but I re-read this one not long after I read it the first time, and then I read it again. This haunting, visionary, and impeccably executed novel left me pondering its secrets long after I’d turned the last page.

[Wendy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A Floating Life," which I won in the Goodread Giveaways is a contemporary story of man who seems lost in the changes that come with midlife. He seems to float through life in a daze, not really aware of what is happening to him. At the beginning of the story the man tries to save his failing marriage and pursue a new career but both quickly go sour. Although he persists in trying to salvage elements of his life, his attempt is thwarted and in the end he loses his apartment and even his potency which is devastating in a society that links it to manliness. As his losses begin to mount he meets the Dutch model builder Pecheur. Not only does Pecheur offer the man a job and a place to live, but the relationship brings friendship and purpose to his life. As the man works through his problems he daydreams conjuring fantastical creatures like talking bears and dachshunds as well as men of myth and legend. Combined with a creative imagination and the magical, Tad Crawford uses humour and quiet wisdom to convey his ideas in a narrative that is interesting and thought provoking. I found it difficult at times to separate illusion from reality but I expect that was the writer's intent. This is a page-turner that gives the reader plenty of food for thought right to the end.

[Jaksen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sort of in the middle about this book. I've never read a book quite like this, sort of hallucinatory, a little bit uncertain (of where the narrator is) but it's well-written and flows along like a sleepy river - or a river where there might be some rapids, but the reader isn't quite certain where they are. Perhaps if I read more fiction of this type I might have a better handle on things. I guess the best thing to do is just read and let the author take you where he wants, which is all anything one can do with a book, and yet...

I sometimes feel there's a reality here, under all the hallucinatory-yet-is-this-really-happening type writing. For uncertainty's sake, I can only give it a three. (I found it hard sometimes to get through a passage, yet when reading I'd read past that passage and cover at least 100 pages in a sitting.)

I can't quite put my finger on it, whether I like it or not, but it certainly is fascinating to talk and write about.

I received a copy of this book through the goodreads giveaway program.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Near Miss

Great writing, for me, requires three seamlessly interwoven elements: a mesmerizing story, a perfectly appropriate form for the telling, and enthralling language. Good writing can have one, or two. Magical realism or surreal writing makes the writing formula even trickier. There, one must allow the dream (or the driving inspiration as the case may be) to dictate all of the above. After which, one must edit, edit, edit, to make it accessible while remaining true to the dream.

A FLOATING LIFE is a series of interconnected dreams, some of which are born of others, some of which are more grounded, as in realer. Plot lines come and go, or appear for a spell in alternating chapters, counterpoint to one another, added to which are the journal entries of a fifteenth century Chinese admiral, Cheng Ho, the full import of which is not revealed until the final chapter. It is, if nothing else, very clever; but not great writing.

The language is never enthralling; the story is by turns captivating, boring, and repugnant; while the telling is always spot on. There are sequences, such as the initial dream job interview with a cyclops, that draw you in. There are those, like a man trapped on a raft at sea drinking his own blood, that are repellant. And there are those, like the sequences in a reimagined Hades, that are simply tedious.

All in all, A FLOATING LIFE feels to me as if the author had steeped himself in the works of Haruki Murakami without ever understanding the process Murakami uses to produce his novels. He might have been better served to have used Ligotti, Kafka or Schultz for inspiration, and simply gone with the flow.

The novel is, unquestionably, worth the time it takes to read it. At times it is rewarding, but the author’s struggles to compose the work are seldom far from view, at least to another writer. Sometimes the dreams come of their own accord, and sometimes they feel forced. Sometimes they feel true to the dreaming, and sometimes they feel manufactured from what the author thinks he knows about dreaming.

A near miss.

[Rebekah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh, one of the worst books I’ve read. So disjointed with very little cohesion. Couldn’t care less about the protagonist. I like the character that built the models, but even there: so many loose ends with nothing to tie them together.

[Si Hui · Rating 4 out of 5]

Non linear and non sensical, odd, really odd but like one of those dreams you want to stay in because it is just so peculiar. and sometimes a complete detour from rational logic is exactly what you need.

[Veronica · Rating 1 out of 5]

I won this book for free through the GoodReads giveaway program. I encourage you to pick up a copy of your own to form your own opinions and share your review.

This is the type of novel that aggravates the hell out of me and drives me crazy! Yet, I somehow I was unable to stop reading and made it all the way through. I think it's because of the hard back binding and the larger serif font that made it seem like it wouldn't be a long read.

Parts of this book were confusing whereas other parts flow with the storyline like with the boat model shop and with his wife. I didn't like that the storyline dove right in without giving history or context to the main character whom we read the POV from throughout the entire novel. I felt as though maybe the narrator was sick in some fashion but it was never revealed to us. Actually many details about the narrator were never revealed to us. (AGGRAVATING!)

In reading the opening lines and segment of chapter 2, I thought it was a dream sequence. However it was never revealed if it was a dream sequence. So maybe I was wrong and it was real plot line to the story. (CONFUSING & AGGRAVATING!) Later in the novel, I thought the "hallucinations" or dream chapters made sense on how they are built... kind of. It seemed the narrator was pulling fragments from his encounter with the shop owner, his doctor and/or his wife.

The ending was a boring and pointless! It was creative with the spirits coming back to help him survive but it felt so open ended. I guess the story could float on forever and in any direction. Overall, very confused!

1 out of 5 stars * Happy Reading!

[Tina · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Floating Life by Tad Crawford Book Review

Do you ever have dreams so vibrant that you wonder if they are real or imagined? In the fantastical novel “ A Floating Life” (which I received as a Goodreads giveaway), the author ,Ted Crawford, has created a very entertaining plot. The main character starts out in a sauna being interviewed for a sous chef position, by a one-eyed chef. I know! That is imagination for you! The man did not get the job unfortunately and things only get worse for him. Immediately the scene switches in the following chapter. He is at a party where he meets a charismatic woman and has some deep discussions about marriage. Who the woman really is, is revealed later on.



My favourite character was an older fellow named Pecheur who owned the most amazing, out of this world shop. His engineering prowess and imagination allowed him to create unbelievable masterpieces. He mentors our protagonist and encourages him to follow his passion. The story references Holland, war, Japan, bears, engineering, dogs and many more. The introspection of so many varied concepts is not only enlightening but at times confusing.

The book “A Floating Life” was very creative and I certainly could not help but feel for the main character, who suffers great loss. This is a story that has an “Alice in Wonderland” feel to it. There is a surprise around every corner. I liked it!

[Moon · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an odd, interesting, imaginative book! I couldn't put it down once I started!



I will predict that this book will go down in history as a classic, along with twain and shakespeare... and I'm not exaggerating...



I am so happy to have won this book on Goodreads! Thank you!

[Kira Ryder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

If you like surreal books, I recommend this one. The narrator - whose name eludes even him - faces middle age as though it's a dream. That's what the chapters made me think of: Strange dreams which could be real if everything was possible.

I loved the writing style, though I'm sure I missed the point in many places, and saw symbolism where there most likely was none...But that's my problem, not the author's. By the time I finished the book, I felt like I was waking up from a dream myself. While the chapters may seem random, at least at first, they still somehow work. I wish I could explain it better, but the best I can do is recommend that you read it & experience it yourself. It really is a uniquely awesome read!

[Sean Foy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly bizarre, surreal, and disjointed, as expected. The surrealism was laid on a bit too thick for me - this type of fiction frustrates me when I need to constantly question whether I lack the sophistication to unpack the absurdity or if the author was carried away with them self. That said, I liked Tad Crawford's voice and writing style.

As with any novel that hits on the nature male sexuality and casts talking animals, a Murakami comparison will be drawn. I would say that the similarities end there and that folks who like Murakami for the pacing, mood, and mystery would be better served to look elsewhere for those elements.

[Kim Faraci · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is easy to escape to the wonderfully bizarre "floating world" experienced through the narrator's senses, especially when meeting all of the unique characters he encounters. The author's imaginative storytelling and quirky wit are entertaining, while his exploration of the self and surrealism are thought-provoking. As a fan of Murakami, this remarkable novel was right up my alley!

[Kari Shear · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastical and obscure--Crawford's imagination and voice were absolutely addicting. Beyond the sophisticated literary and philosophical appeal, there is a story to which all can relate. Not my typical read, but definitely could not put this one down. I would strongly recommend this book :)

[A.j. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel was surreal, bizarre, and unlike anything I've read in a long time. I loved the author's unique voice and the unpredictable plot. I'm a big Kafka fan, and if you are too, you should definitely pick this up!

[Toby · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't as into the sur-real stuff but this caught my interest anyway. I am more afraid it would be too out there for me. However the writer draws you into it. Keeps it interesting and I was able to follow along. It is hard for me to even compare the writing to other writers.

[Urn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Crazy book. Kind of all over the place and some of the scenes don't seem to be connected to the rest of the story. But it was very original and if you are into surrealism you would probably enjoy it.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

So. Well. That was, um. Kind of weird. Just when I thought I understood it and could relate what was going on to my own experiences, it went in a new (and kind of strange) direction. Mom, Suzanne, you'd both hate this book. I'll have to think about this book some more.

[Tammy Collet · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this a s a "First Reads" Giveaway from Goodreads. I enjoyed the imagery used throughout the book but found it challenging to follow when it jumped from one state of being to another.

[Barbara Leuthe · Rating 3 out of 5]

very jumping around book took a bit to get used to the style.I recieved this book free from goodreads first reads