![]() The mathematical precision might sound alarms for those wary of avant-garde gimmicks, but it shouldn’t take many of Armand’s readers by surprise, since neither he nor Equus Press have ever been shrinking violets about what his novels aspire to do. The latest novel by Armand, a writer and theorist based in Prague, it sits fat and square at eight hundred and eighty-eight pages, divided into eight sections of eight chapters each. Such an opaque manoeuvre, like a snub to convention by someone who’s mastered it long before, is the stuff on which The Combinations thrives. ‘Perhaps,’ suggests the hero of Louis Armand’s The Combinations, ‘when you stare long enough a crack in the wall is just a mirror.’ Is this some kind of bizarre riddle, or a quip about psychosis? Whatever the joke is, it’s cock-eyed, knowing, deliberately obnoxious but still looking for a laugh. ![]()
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