This may be the strangest and most fascinating book I’ve read in many years!  Powell writes 164 pages of densely packed prose which consists entirely of QUESTIONS!  From the deeply existential   (Is there any hope?  When the going gets tough, are you one of the tough that gets going?  What broke your heart?) to the interestingly specific (What is the loudest noise you have every heard?, Can you waltz?) to the weirdly funny (Do you like tar?, Wouldn’t it be sporty and fun to carry around a riding crop and whip things with it?), Powell goes on and on and on without chapter breaks and almost without paragraphs to interrupt the fire hose like flow of interrogatives.  Made me laugh out loud on nearly every page and made me think as well.  This is a very weird, funny, thought-provoking work which must be much loved by the Oulipo’s, a group of French writers and mathematicians who wrote books with a twist, e.g. George Perec’s book, A Void, which at 300 pages was a lipogram which contained no letter e.  Here’s a random passage chosen by opening the book:

“Do you miss Tab and do you fully understand its disappearance?  If you could have a guaranteed steady supply of an expensive or illicit substance or other commodity much prized and hard to get, what would it be?  Are you surprised at the low number of people crazy or the high number of people crazy?  Do you know offhand whether a hippopotamus sweats?  If offered a cherry or a strawberry, which do you take.” 

Weird and quite wonderful for 164 pages, blurbed by Jonathan Safran Foer, Ian Frazier, Amy Hempel and Luc Sante, this is a must read if only for a few pages!