cover image The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri

The 351 Books of Irma Arcuri

David Bajo, . . Viking, $25.95 (289pp) ISBN 978-0-670-01929-8

Volumes by Borges, Cervantes, Sebald and others serve as clues and almost as characters in Bajo’s intriguing debut, a love story wrapped in a bibliomaniacal whodunit with a hall-of-mirrors bow on top. The books belonged to Irma Arcuri, a bookbinder, writer and the lifelong object of preternatural math whiz Philip Masryk’s desire. After Philip learns that Irma has supposedly killed herself and bequeathed her library to him, he quits his job to explore Irma’s books and discover any messages that might be left in them for him. With the help of Lucia, a beautiful woman uncannily familiar to Philip, he discovers that Irma has not only rebound the books but also changed their texts; a new story is added to Borges’s Ficciones and buried in Don Quixote are notes from Irma. As he follows Irma’s long-cold trail from Philadelphia to Barcelona and Seville, Philip finds traces of Irma everywhere, but few clues that point to a resolution. Though Bajo’s plotting can be elliptical and the denouement doesn’t quite sing, the narrative’s intelligence and passion transcend its metafictional ambiguities. (June)