I have liked Russell Hoban's novels ever since I happened on TURTLE DIARY in a Bethesda, MD, used bookstore way back when. ANGELICA LOST AND FOUND is a wild and weird fantasy about a hippograf named Volatore that escapes from a 16th century poem and tries to track down the heroine of the poem, a girl named Angelica. Somehow he gets to 21st century San Francisco, where he is drawn to an art gallery owned named Angelica. They immediately get down to business.

In the hands of a lesser writer, this story would be whimsical in a lead-footed way and absurd. In Hoban's hands, it is funny and entrancing the way a good fantasy should be.