So then, surrealist meta-fiction, we meet again. MacInnes’ award winning 2016 debut novel splits into two parts, somewhat different on the surface, but consistent in essence. Part one takes place in the corporate and sociological, part two in an ecological fever dream.

Looking for an ostensibly missing man, an unnamed inspector in an unnamed South American urban center (seems like Brazil) learns about the corporation at which he worked, where actors are hired to impersonate workers to inspire the real workers to work harder. Which doesn’t have a name, having undergone so many mergers and divisions with fake employees and real employees and fake offices and real offices that who can say what, in essence, it actually is anymore.

If his workplace’s reality is uncertain, well, he may have had an even bigger problem. A microbiologist working with the inspector claims, on the basis of organic matter left on the man’s keyboard, from which can be deduced bacterial colonization and resultant effects on his psychology, that the man himself became uncertain of his own reality before he disappeared:

Two disappearances: internal and social. He stopped believing he was real and then nobody could see him. Inspector, I have another appointment. I really should go. But you will keep me updated on the investigation? I would like to find out where he’s gone.

Yes, where has that which is the most real about us gone to? We know very well it’s not kept on our surface. We’re not going to find it at our workplace, hah! Other people don’t see it. Perhaps we don’t know where it is ourselves. Maybe we’re never going to find it doing what we’re doing. Out on a walk, the inspector sees a large crowd gathered around something they’re all pushing to see. He tries to fight his way to the middle to find out what’s going on:

He had to stop now, because - and he knew this was impossible, but it appeared to be true - he had passed over on to the other side, gone, that is, past the centre, which he hadn’t even noticed, hadn’t seen a thing, and now he was actually moving against people that were facing him, coming, as he was now, somehow out from the centre…

He walked away and took a taxi. Before entering he looked back and nothing appeared to have changed, the same excited jostling and commotion was ongoing, and he was none the wiser. What’s going on over there? The driver asked him. Oh that, he said. That’s nothing, nothing important really, and he gave the driver his address.

The inspector decides the missing man may have disappeared into the massive tropical forest region, and this brings us to part two. He first joins up with a tour group operating out of a remote outpost connected to the corporation. The tour promises to bring Western tourists into “first contact” with an indigenous tribe… which turns out to be local actors. More play on “reality” and disappearance going on here.

Later, he wakes one day to find everyone else at the outpost has, what else, seemingly disappeared. Coffee cups still warm. The forest quickly grows over the outpost in the following days, and the inspector begins a trek through the forest in which he loses his sense of self and at one point seems to undergo something of the course of human evolution. But who has actually disappeared: everyone else, or the inspector? ( )

Not a review, just a reaction.

What the fuck did I just read? Seriously, I think I really liked it, but it was fucking weird and I'm not sure if I understood it. But, if you like the weird and the surreal and books that challenge your perception of reality, you should pick it up. ( )

I have no idea what I just read. There is surrealism, madness, mystery, and adventure and the reader must decide what is real and what is not. A retired police inspector takes on a missing person case and decides that he must become Carlos in order to find him. When that doesn't work the inspector decides that Carlos must have escaped into the jungle and then goes deeper and deeper into his inner psyche and the jungle. It's beautiful and lush but hard to follow. Their are theories, what ifs, spiraling threads, and insanity. I could never discuss this or analyze it. It's far too off the war. For fans of surrealism and literary fiction. ( )