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The Impossibly
"The first time we met, it was about a stapler, I think."
Deadpan delivery and a sly eye for detail characterize the anonymous secret agent in Laird Hunt's tense, funny spy noir. When the nameless narrator botches an assignment for the clandestine organization that employs him, everyone in his life—including his new girlfriend—is revealed to be either true-blue, double operative, or both.
With the literary coyness of Paul Auster and the dark absurdity of Kafka, Hunt's debut is a daring, memory-driven narrative that is as fittingly spare as a bare ceiling light—and just as pendulous. On the surface, the narrator is a simple man, fixing his washer and dryer, strolling through city parks, falling in love at an office supply store. But in The Impossibly, the mundane gives way to outrageous misconduct, and with each unexpected visitor or cryptic note, the tension reaches tantalizing heights. As the narrator frugally doles out clues about his dangerous work in an unnamed European city, the reader inevitably becomes confidante and fellow gumshoe. The narrator's final assignment—to identify his own assassin—dismantles the reader's own analysis of the evidence.
Deadpan delivery and a sly eye for detail characterize the anonymous secret agent in Laird Hunt's tense, funny spy noir. When the nameless narrator botches an assignment for the clandestine organization that employs him, everyone in his life—including his new girlfriend—is revealed to be either true-blue, double operative, or both.
With the literary coyness of Paul Auster and the dark absurdity of Kafka, Hunt's debut is a daring, memory-driven narrative that is as fittingly spare as a bare ceiling light—and just as pendulous. On the surface, the narrator is a simple man, fixing his washer and dryer, strolling through city parks, falling in love at an office supply store. But in The Impossibly, the mundane gives way to outrageous misconduct, and with each unexpected visitor or cryptic note, the tension reaches tantalizing heights. As the narrator frugally doles out clues about his dangerous work in an unnamed European city, the reader inevitably becomes confidante and fellow gumshoe. The narrator's final assignment—to identify his own assassin—dismantles the reader's own analysis of the evidence.
215 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2001
11 people are currently reading
284 people want to read
About the author
Laird Hunt
40 books515 followersLaird Hunt is an American writer, translator and academic.
Hunt grew up in Singapore, San Francisco, The Hague, and London before moving to his grandmother's farm in rural Indiana, where he attended Clinton Central High School. He earned a B.A. from Indiana University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. He also studied French literature at the Sorbonne. Hunt worked in the press office at the United Nations while writing his first novel. He is currently a professor in the Creative Writing program at University of Denver. Hunt lives with his wife, the poet Eleni Sikelianos, in Boulder, Colorado.
Hunt grew up in Singapore, San Francisco, The Hague, and London before moving to his grandmother's farm in rural Indiana, where he attended Clinton Central High School. He earned a B.A. from Indiana University and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. He also studied French literature at the Sorbonne. Hunt worked in the press office at the United Nations while writing his first novel. He is currently a professor in the Creative Writing program at University of Denver. Hunt lives with his wife, the poet Eleni Sikelianos, in Boulder, Colorado.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 20, 2008
This is not a book for readers who like their stories kept straight. This is for readers who appreciate the fine line, the well-made word. For readers who'll forgive a Ponzi-scheme plot and learn to love the linguistic-savant instead. I read this and I'm thinking that I need to give up my own fretful scratchings because at best they'll be second-best (but probably more like billionth-best). Sigh. Do you mind if I write "Sigh." even though it does nothing to convey the chest-wilting sadness I'm feeling right now? Not because the book is sad though in fact it could be interpreted that way. There are times when it reminds me of Nabokov, specifically of Transparent Things, especially towards the end. Oh why did I read this novel? Oh woe and more woe and lots of sniveling and garment twisting. I'll have to go and read something awful now to disinter my spirits.
August 2, 2009
I tried to read this a few years ago, couldn't get into it, and gave up. I loved it this time. My favorite Laird Hunt book, although his most inaccessible. He was my professor for a week during my school's writing program this summer.
January 15, 2009
A lovesick unidentified agent botches up a job for his criminal employer and is reprimanded. Not much is revealed. Some vagaries add to the story, some seem too purposefully random. Like: why is it so hard to find turkey? What is it that his love puts in his hand? And some of the side story fill doesn't add depth. Like: spontaneously combustible damp hay, ponderings of honey.
The beginning was strong enough... and actually included paragraph breaks between scenes, thoughts, dialogue, location shifts, etc (unlike the rest of the novel).
I did want to know who bashed his head in (his love? his friend?) and if his relationship would continue. I was invested in the love between the characters. I liked how she set a stapler just at the right height for him to reach.
As the book continued many sentences remained well crafted, which is saying something because some sentences went on for about half a page. But all the characters started having the same (enjoyable enough) voice, which when combined with the no paragraph breaks added to some dizzying pages.
For a direct quote: "I am not very lucky, I told her later that day, when I saw her again, which is to say that I did see and speak to her again, whether or not it was her."
To me this type of writing is a bit tiring to read late at night. Just when you get your mind wrapped around the sequence of events the narrator will say, "Actually, I'm omitting the part where I had to..." and then veer off and return later forcing the reader to gather oneself again when the sequence continues.
A typical good enough and bothersome enough passage:
"We lay on our backs talking about honey, about its different colors and grades--yum, we said--and wondered aloud if dead bees produced ghosts as dead fleas, it has been said, did, and if ghosts of bees would go on making honey and what that honey would taste like, probably not so good, though we couldn't be sure, but sooner or later we’d find out, and we concluded that nature, especially given the creation of honey, all kinds of honey, really was, as the beekeeper had said, quite smart."
The humor was queen enough. I liked the typed "compliment" he was delivered. I liked the scene where the other agent let him borrow his spare pair of sunglasses but had to keep a hand on them. Even character quirks like "not being able to say goodbye" where done well and pretty funny. Ha.
I wish the author would have relied on his wit and prose more and just told the story. But that is just me. I am not much for gimmicks.
The beginning was strong enough... and actually included paragraph breaks between scenes, thoughts, dialogue, location shifts, etc (unlike the rest of the novel).
I did want to know who bashed his head in (his love? his friend?) and if his relationship would continue. I was invested in the love between the characters. I liked how she set a stapler just at the right height for him to reach.
As the book continued many sentences remained well crafted, which is saying something because some sentences went on for about half a page. But all the characters started having the same (enjoyable enough) voice, which when combined with the no paragraph breaks added to some dizzying pages.
For a direct quote: "I am not very lucky, I told her later that day, when I saw her again, which is to say that I did see and speak to her again, whether or not it was her."
To me this type of writing is a bit tiring to read late at night. Just when you get your mind wrapped around the sequence of events the narrator will say, "Actually, I'm omitting the part where I had to..." and then veer off and return later forcing the reader to gather oneself again when the sequence continues.
A typical good enough and bothersome enough passage:
"We lay on our backs talking about honey, about its different colors and grades--yum, we said--and wondered aloud if dead bees produced ghosts as dead fleas, it has been said, did, and if ghosts of bees would go on making honey and what that honey would taste like, probably not so good, though we couldn't be sure, but sooner or later we’d find out, and we concluded that nature, especially given the creation of honey, all kinds of honey, really was, as the beekeeper had said, quite smart."
The humor was queen enough. I liked the typed "compliment" he was delivered. I liked the scene where the other agent let him borrow his spare pair of sunglasses but had to keep a hand on them. Even character quirks like "not being able to say goodbye" where done well and pretty funny. Ha.
I wish the author would have relied on his wit and prose more and just told the story. But that is just me. I am not much for gimmicks.
January 31, 2022
An extremely challenging read, bordering on incomprehensible if one lets their mind wander even the slightest while reading. Even so, I cannot say with any assurance I followed the plot, which seemed to replicate itself at least two or three times over, albeit form a different perspective and/or time frame, which made understanding things quite difficult. I loved the obscure writing style, there is this odd feel to it that becomes almost rhythmic at certain points. I kept waiting for the oft-used switches and hesitations and such to come about, which, when they did not, led me to feel cheated somehow. Others have compared this to Stein and Beckett, and while I lack the experience with the former to agree or disagree, I have read plenty of the latter and while there is an idea of Beckett-ism here, it is more so the strangeness and repetition than the overall style or command of language that Beckett employs. I would say more like Paul Auster, though also not. Still, an intriguing, if not confusing and ultimately unresolved plot. For me anyway. I feel Hunt focused more on mechanisms than story, which isn't always good, but here works effectively enough to make the book a fun read. Upon finishing I had no real idea what the plot was, nor if anything was resolved, explained, or finished. It could be the entire book was just an exercise in linguistics, and if that was the case it was quite profound, if not always consistently so. I can see me looking for more of his work, even if I am rather sure I will be similarly mixed in my understanding and praise.
February 28, 2023
I'm on a low key mission to read all of Laird Hunt's books ever since I learned of his existence when his book Zorrie was a 2021 NBA finalist. I collected all the books and this is the fourth I have read. I loved Zorrie, Kind One, and Indiana, Indiana. And all were quite different in style. The Impossibly is Hunt's first novel. It is quite different in style from the other three. It is his first novel. I did not love it as I had the other three but I found it quite good.
This is a difficult book to review because the reader will never know what really happened, even when the book has been finished. It is a book, as GR friend Lee likes to say, "unmoors" the reader. It starts out fairly traditionally but there are hints that all is not what it seems. Our narrator is never quite sure about what is happening or continues to add things. His memory is quite a sieve.
The book starts in an office product store where our narrator helps an attractive young woman buy a stapler (my first impression was that English was her second language and she could not find the English word for what she wanted, but there was no confirmation of that impression). His friend John (is he really a friend?) shows up and they put on a party. Some strange things happen in the planning and at the party. John, the narrator, the young woman, and another young woman go on a trip. The narrator reneges on a job he had agreed to do to go on the trip, but we do not learn this until they are back from the trip and the narrator gets worked over and dragged away. John may (or may not) save him. The young woman may (or may not) be involved.
Now the confusion is ramping up and it only gets more confusing until the confusion seems to be the point. Our narrator is investigating himself and whether or not he is dead and who killed him and when. Or at least that is the conclusion I came to. The whole thing was rather fascinating.
As Percival Everett puts in his introduction to the edition I read: This is a novel about appearances, reality and shadow, identity and anonymity, words and their corresponding signifieds, or the echoes of those signifieds. ... The Impossibly takes a kind of psychic snapshot of the soul of someone who must move through shadows, whose job it is to move through shadows, whose choice it is to do so. Reality for this unnamed operative is like a phantom limb, the limb having been severed from him long ago, but the sense of it, the weight of it, the aura of its remains, with all its paresthesias, transient aches, and the pain that resided in the part before its loss.
This is a difficult book to review because the reader will never know what really happened, even when the book has been finished. It is a book, as GR friend Lee likes to say, "unmoors" the reader. It starts out fairly traditionally but there are hints that all is not what it seems. Our narrator is never quite sure about what is happening or continues to add things. His memory is quite a sieve.
The book starts in an office product store where our narrator helps an attractive young woman buy a stapler (my first impression was that English was her second language and she could not find the English word for what she wanted, but there was no confirmation of that impression). His friend John (is he really a friend?) shows up and they put on a party. Some strange things happen in the planning and at the party. John, the narrator, the young woman, and another young woman go on a trip. The narrator reneges on a job he had agreed to do to go on the trip, but we do not learn this until they are back from the trip and the narrator gets worked over and dragged away. John may (or may not) save him. The young woman may (or may not) be involved.
Now the confusion is ramping up and it only gets more confusing until the confusion seems to be the point. Our narrator is investigating himself and whether or not he is dead and who killed him and when. Or at least that is the conclusion I came to. The whole thing was rather fascinating.
As Percival Everett puts in his introduction to the edition I read: This is a novel about appearances, reality and shadow, identity and anonymity, words and their corresponding signifieds, or the echoes of those signifieds. ... The Impossibly takes a kind of psychic snapshot of the soul of someone who must move through shadows, whose job it is to move through shadows, whose choice it is to do so. Reality for this unnamed operative is like a phantom limb, the limb having been severed from him long ago, but the sense of it, the weight of it, the aura of its remains, with all its paresthesias, transient aches, and the pain that resided in the part before its loss.
May 6, 2022
A lot of fun but you need to accept a very unreliable narrator who often leaves out details that you have to fill in with seduction or imagination. A real experiment with a story involving crazy event centering on what appears to be a simple Character capable of terrible things.
May 9, 2020
Not one of my favorite novels from one of my favorite authors.
May 14, 2010
This is an awesome book! I definitely will pick up another by him. Amazing and beautiful sentences that wander but don't bore, sentences so incredible that it doesn't matter if each one is the last. It was worth it. And, he is hilarious.
Another plus: he constructs a narrative which winds through the process of remembering and in the whole book I think we get to know only one character with a name, and you never loose interest. That's a very good narrator.
Another plus: he constructs a narrative which winds through the process of remembering and in the whole book I think we get to know only one character with a name, and you never loose interest. That's a very good narrator.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 18, 2013
Three words: masturbatory linguistic gymnastics. It has its moments, but they're too few and far between, too wrapped up in taffy-like sentence structures and cutesy rearranged or interrupted clauses. Effectively combines the most distancing aspects of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces and the noir genre, and that makes for one laborious read.
September 27, 2008
Reading this book is quite an experience, although I definitely feel that the beginning is much better than the end. That isn't to say that I don't like the end, but that I loved the beginning, whereas the end wasn't quite as good as that.
February 29, 2016
This book is too literary for me. It's one of those books written to impress other writers and not for the pleasure of your average reader. It started out interesting but the writing style just became tedious to read for 266 pages. I would have liked it more as a short story.
December 5, 2012
Detective ghost stories written with a cavalier attitude toward chronology? SIGN ME UP.
September 6, 2012
It's amazing how the story is created by telling only all that is around the central story. a mystery novel in its true sense...
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews