I finished this intriguing novel last night and have since spent my sleeping and waking hours revisiting scenes and sorting out details in an attempt to "figure this book out." I've never read a novel quite like this one and applaud David B

I finished this intriguing novel last night and have since spent my sleeping and waking hours revisiting scenes and sorting out details in an attempt to "figure this book out." I've never read a novel quite like this one and applaud David Bajo for his creativity and risk-taking involved with writing a book (especially a first) that doesn't neatly fit into a genre or follow an established pattern. Is it a mystery? A love story? Maybe an Adventure or Travel novel? Who knows besides Bajo? But that doesn't really matter (to me at least) into which category this novel fits. What matters to me is what I learned and what I will take away. . .and that is the part I'm having trouble digesting.

I'll begin with what I can verbalize. The imagery and emotions created from the descriptions of the places the characters visited/ran stands out upon a first look back at this novel. I get the sense that I could easily identify the sites visited by Philip in Spain. The descriptive and compelling prose transports me from my seat to the Cervante's Arch where I can feel the balmy night that causes my shirt to cling to my back and I can see and unfortunately, smell the dark form of an itinerant man recessed in the shadows of the arch urinating onto the cobbled walk. This novel flowed for me and I was able to finished it in three sittings. I had to remind myself a few times of who was speaking (the narrator shifts from character to character in subsequent paragraphs without the benefit of quotes. Surprisingly this didn't lose me; rather it lent to the flowing, dreamlike sequence that presided throughout the novel.

As far as some of the characters go, I still haven't figured them out. I think I have a handle on Nicole, Beatrice, Philip and Sam, but Irma and Lucia still complicate my thoughts. I want to know what makes Irma tick. I get the impression that Irma was a passionate person who enjoyed life throughly, mostly due to the relationships she experience with other people. However, she makes the decision to disappear. Maybe she's secretly watching the events play out as she realizes the impact she had on certain people or maybe she started a new life and left the books, not as clues, but as a legacy to feel comforted that her former life will still exist in some fashion. This would be the first thing I would want to know if I met Irma.

Questions for our book club:

*Is Irma alive and well, enjoying her life as a voyeur? Is she dead? Has she started a new life? Will Philip ever find her? Will she let him?

*Why didn't the running mathematician just get a second copy of the novels left to him as a means for comparison instead of spending so much of his time deciding if Irma or the author was speaking? He's so analytical with everything else in his life that it seems to me, this would have been his mode of operation.

*Do you agree with the reviewers who opine the "gratuitous sex" and "complicated math" sequences had nothing to add to the story? (I disagree on both accounts, btw.