The Saint Perpetuus Club Of Buenos Aires

The Saint Perpetuus Club Of Buenos Aires, by Eric Stener Carlson, Tartarus Press £25, 233 pages

There’s an entire sub-genre of novels about secret books and libraries, the most obvious recent examples being Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, set in Nazi Germany, and Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow Of The Wind, about a mysterious book depository beneath the streets of Barcelona.

This altogether more peculiar entry follows the same magical realist lines, with added elements of Kafka and the Decadents. This time, we’re in Buenos Aires with failed graduate and dreamer Miguel Ibañez as he purchases a suspiciously cheap old book, Lives Of The Saints, and discovers handwritten notes from an earlier reader claiming to have used the volume to uncover the secret of turning back time.

Employed by the all-but-forgotten Ministry of Parks, Public Monuments and Green Areas to front a doomed conference on whether to lock the homeless out of public spaces, Miguel spends his days trapped behind a desk, waiting to escape to the pages of his prized possession. Soon he suspects that it may be only one of several copies hidden across the city ...

The scene appears to be set for an excursion into the real purpose of Miguel’s life, drawn to the surface by the anonymous scribbler who has discovered an alternative universe beneath the pavements. But this is not a novel about the empowerment of literature. The man behind the marginalia is a petty-minded, embittered autistic who is interested only in using his new-found powers to trounce an office rival. As Miguel risks his marriage, life and soul to uncover the book’s secret world, we start to see that what he’s reading is altering his own perspective on life.

The novel boasts two fairly unlikeable narrators, but their twin obsessions with the hidden meanings of the city’s monuments and murals makes for an unsettling, gripping journey. Stener Carlson subverts our expectations: readers and booksellers cannot be trusted, while the search for knowledge may not lead to enlightenment but to madness and death. The multi-layered narrative is full of surprises, and the conclusion provides a modest grace note that beautifully befits the tale.

Christopher Fowler is the author of ‘Paperboy’ (Bantam)