Into the Phantom Zone

The Amazing Absorbing Boy is a very funny book. But it is also many other things. Like the best of novels, it is as layered and enjoyable as a profound dream. It surprises, it amuses, it intrigues and it troubles. And, like a dream, it moves simultaneously through the quotidian details of daily life and into the deep levels of the psyche.

At first glance it is a gentle Candide-like satire of Canadian society, specifically Toronto, experienced over a period of two years by a somewhat reluctant would-be immigrant from Trinidad—16-year-old Samuel.

Also at first glance, the book is of a certain genre that has existed since travellers started recounting their travels, which in Canada begins significantly with the journals of the first European settlers—Susanna Moodie’s books are a good example. It is possible to read this book as the tale of an immigrant bewildered by a new land and its peculiar customs. The novel also falls under that wider...