The effect of living backwards as the White Queen tells Alice in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, is that it always makes one a little giddy at first. Heidi Julavits's narrative certainly has this effect on the reader in her second novel. The protagonist, Alice, is travelling through Morocco with Edith, her elder sister. En route from Casablanca to Melilla, flight 919 is (apparently) hijacked by an (apparently) blind man called Bruno, but, as the chief hostage negotiator, Pitcairn, points out: 'Things aren't as they appear, Alice.This is an understatement. How does the disabled hijacker effortlessly control a plane full of people, and how does he know so much about them? What is his relationship with the enigmatic negotiator and which sister is falling for whom? Narration, situation and identity all transpire to be radically and deliberately unreliable throughout the novel.

The novel's postmodern mix of moral conundrums, flippant wit and bitterly humorous philosophising tallies nicely with Julavits's other role as a founding editor of the literary periodical The Believer . In its first issue, Julavits presented a manifesto for a new era of experimentation', and lambasted critics negative attitude to ambi tion. For Julavits "ambitious" implies the hopeful act of overreaching and she lives up to her own standards in this novel - an ambitious, imperfect, challenging piece of work, messy but interesting, funny yet frustrating.