What is the strangest-but-still-enjoyable novel you have read?

I'll second PALE FIRE. An absolute brainsmasher of a book, which leaves you of very little idea of what is and is not reality, and yet not only enjoyable but also hilarious.

If I had known Trollope would count as strange, I'd have been in this thread earlier.

I don't know. Once I like a book, I no longer consider it strange. And if I still consider it strange by the end, I probably don't like it. So I don't have any contribution to make. I'm just completely wasting your time.

1st one that comes to mind is Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler. I took it out of the library once years and years ago and FELL IN LOVE. Weird? Maybe. Thoroughly enjoyable? YES!

The 2nd one that comes to mind is Hubert Selby Jr.'s fuckin' REQUIEM FOR A DREAM. What a smoker. I read this one when I was too young...about 1980. It made me want to get higher than I already was at the time. The book is one long paragraph...grammar/sentence structure was thrown out the window, making it a hell of a ride. Weird? Not in my books. Fabulously enjoyable? YES!

anyone else taking note of these titles? I'm so tempted to read all the books on this thread....let's hope they're all in print, including the Victorian one

The Conversions by Harry Mathews

Wiki said:

The book has some superficial affinities with Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, but Mathews is at once easier to read (he is frequently quite funny) and harder to pin down; the reader, like the narrator, is never sure to what extent he has fallen victim to a hoax.

Click to expand...