Nikolski by Nicolas Dickner

Searching for a word to describe this book, many flood my mind – peculiar, odd, quirky, interesting (yes, most definitely interesting), and, well, I guess they all fit.

The story is of three people: an unnamed narrator who works in a book shop, who only occasionally pops into view; a man named Noah, who has lived most of his life in a trailer wandering all over Canada with his mother, wondering about his father who disappeared shortly after his birth, leaving behind a plastic compass (the “Nikolski Compass”) and a handful of letters; and a woman named Joyce who runs away to Montreal in search of her pirate ancestors, lands a job in a fish shop, and becomes a pirate (of sorts) herself.

These three characters intersect in odd (there’s that word again) but decidedly interesting ways. Each seems to have a piece of a giant puzzle which centers around a book with no covers. The book store clerk calls it a “unicum” – a term which does not appear in any dictionary or book about books I have. He describes it as a book cobbled together from three different sources and sewn together.

I am going to leave it at that. If this isn’t enough to whet your appetite, you need a new appetite. And, why are you reading a book blog? 5 stars

--Chiron, 8/10/09