How I enjoy novels that I could never have possibly written myself. So is the case for The Last Days of Lacuna Cabal by Sean Dixon. Quirky and unique, the story toys with the bizarre. It is inventive and one must pay close attention when reading; I cannot say that about all novels I read. For instance, whenever I’m reading a less-than-engaging book, I realize that my eyes have traveled over several paragraphs without having absorbed what was happening. And yet when I go back to those paragraphs, I often find that, indeed, nothing was happening. However, when I was reading The Last Days of Lacuna Cabal I paid very close attention so not to miss every essential word and found myself actually laughing out loud while being taken on an adventurous ride.

 

This novel is a great book club pick, as long as the club doesn’t mirror the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women’s Book Club and do what those members did, which is actually acting out the book they are reading—otherwise it could get too confusing, especially since the book contains a wide cast of characters already necessary to keep track of, all of them interesting. One character in particular is sometimes referenced as he, other times as she, and this is not a typo. The first time I caught the gender discrepancy, I went back to when I first met Aline, thinking I may have missed something, but then realized how the author was simply being inclusive in a wink, wink sort of way.

 

What pulled me in immediately was realizing that I wasn’t reading another typical story about a group of females who meet each week to discuss a book while we the reader discover so and so is having marital problems while another so and so is ill and so on. No, I think it’s safe to say that one would be hard-pressed to meet a group like those in the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women’s Book Club and perhaps that’s just as well. One must be voted in to be a member to this club and those who never made it in to the club (and the book) are probably better off for it, since I don’t know how one could ever be the same after participating in this journey. For me, that is a sign of a good writer, bringing the reader somewhere they would never have gone otherwise.

 

According to his bio, Sean Dixon “gave up jobs as a shipper-receiver, a poster boy (of the putting up on billboards variety), and a prison driver to become a writer.” How fortunate for readers who crave a story that inspires smiles and surprises at every turn. I’ll look for this author’s next work, but I plan to pick up The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal again sometime in the future to read again since I’m finding that I’m already missing this idiosyncratic cast of characters.