Laird Hunt

"This first novel of paranoia and, in an odd way, yearning, also is probably one of the funniest and strangest books I've read in a long while."

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St. Petersburg Times

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'murky', 'obscure', 'hazy', 'hallucinatory', 'difficult', 'frustrating','incomprehensible', 'intriguing'

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Publisher's Weekly

"Every once in a long while, you discover a novel unlike anything else you've ever read. Laird Hunt's debut is one of them. Innovative, comic, bizarre and beautiful, The Impossibly reads as if Donald Barthelme were channeling Alain Robbe-Grillet, Samuel Beckett, Ben Marcus and reruns of Get Smart."

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Time Out New York

"...as dark and mysterious as its title."

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Hartford Courant

"...stylish, if opaque, noir."

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Kirkus Reviews

"...incredibly funny and well-written and oddly touching, and certainly unlike anything else you've read this year."

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The Capitol Times

"In fresh, inventive prose, the delightfully and maddeningly equivocal narrator of The Impossibly, Laird Hunt's first novel, indirectly relates his circuitous story. He is some sort of freelance criminal, but, by inviting the reader into select minute details of his life, the narrator keeps the specifics out of focus until, incrementally, he reveals his line of work, the danger he risks and the duplicity of nearly all his acquaintances."

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Publisher's Weekly

"At times poignant and acerbic, The Impossibly almost reads like a commentary on Flann O'Brien's classic The Third Policeman. As opposed to so much disposable fiction so shamelessly promoted these days, Laird Hunt is clearly a writer who has undergone a long apprenticeship in the intricate art of actually making sentences. The care and delight he takes in every word, from pronoun to article, definite or indefinite, offers the reader a rare and precise pleasure."

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Ammiel Alcalay

"Simultaneously a compellingly elusive roman noir and an eccentric meditation on the nature of perception..."

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Brian Evenson

The Impossibly

When the anonymous narrator botches an assignment from the clandestine organization that employs him, everyone in his life becomes a participant in his punishment. In the end, he is called out of retirement for a final assignment: to seek and identify his own assassin. This edition includes an introduction by Percival Everett, an afterword by the author, and the novella, “Green Metal Door,” the first edition’s “lost chapter.”

The first time we met it was about a stapler, I think...