The practical difficulties of extracting keys from the pockets of tight-fitting trousers while ascending stairs; the logistical hazards of seducing pub landladies; the absurdity of certain idiomatic expressions if interpreted too literally; the qualitative difference between homemade and shop-bought pizza. Such are the disparate matters occupying the mind of Simon Okotie’s unnamed detective protagonist as he goes about investigating the disappearance of a colleague. In the Absence of Absalon holds a plethora of whimsical digressions in a wafer-thin plot, as Okotie’s story-telling is repeatedly driven off-piste. These, along with the geometric minutiae of his surroundings, are dissected with the kind of exhaustive, hyper-officious attention to contingency we might expect to see in a statute book or a zealously drafted legal contract.
This novel is wilfully, unremittingly oddball: there are parenthetical asides within parenthetical asides, dizzyingly prolix subclauses and playful riffs on the limits of authorial omniscience — the narrator speculating, for example, as to whether his protagonist has been going to the toilet during the chapter breaks.
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