Caprice No. 25

Structured, to some extent, like a Tarantino script, Caprice No. 25 surprises not only by exploring an underground world, by outlining a plot that is typical of detective novels, but also by casting an unusual perspective whereby the brutal universe of sex and drug trafficking is filtered by the wounded consciousness of the character-narrator. Benumbed by the loss of love, he reconstructs, through ingenious games of memory, the outlines of an absent femininity in passages of a remarkably sensuous texture. The young author’s writing is marked by fluent and intense flows, overlapping carceral metaphors of the private and the social self, and emphasizing the therapeutic role of memory, which may enable one, like an internalized rite of passage, to overcome individual traumas. Daniel Sidor’s self-reflexive narrative, its striking descriptions and cinematic tension recommend it as a challenging novel straddling the boundary between psychological and adventure fiction.