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Robert Strandquist's The Dreamlife of Bridges was a surprising treat. It was surprising for two reasons: firstly because I never really know what I'm going be getting myself into when I try out a new author, and secondly because when I first started reading the book, I didn't think I was going to like it.

The Dreamlife of Bridges begins with an almost fairy-tale-like atmosphere. In the first scene, the main character, Leo, who works as a shoemaker, is given a request for custom footwear that borders on the surreal. What I thought was metaphorical, however, turned out to be quite real in the context of the story. At that point I became confused and wondered what the rest of the book was going to be like.

It didn't take long, however, for Strandquist's writing style to settle into my brain and start to flow. What I thought was going to be the literary equivalent of a Dali painting turned into a very tight and economical look at the mundane. It took me off guard, and I like it for that.

Set in Vancouver, the story takes us through a landscape that is familiar to many people: a large, densely populated city. I've never visited Vancouver myself, but I could picture it through Strandquist's eyes. His descriptive passages are rich and vivid, and his word choices are unusual enough to make the scenes and descriptions memorable.

There are two point-of-view characters in this story. Leo, the shoemaker, is a man struggling with his past and trying to find his place in the world. June, who lives in the flat above Leo's at the beginning of the story (which made me think of Jann Arden's song "Living Under June"), is a divorced single mother trying desperately to keep her child and keep her life together. Strandquist's presentation of these two people and their lives, while peppered with delicious descriptions and delightful turns of language, is straightforward, unjudgmental, and unapologetic.

There are no wasted words in The Dreamlife of Bridges. Strandquist very quickly gets from point to point, never dallying over anything that isn't essential for the reader to know. Time and locale change in the blink of a paragraph, but that's part of the deal. You're along for the ride, and Strandquist knows precisely where he wants to take you and how fast.

In the world of this story, everything is equal. Nothing is given any greater importance than anything else. Traumatic events are described with the same even-tempered and thoughtful language as trivial ones. The banal is given equal billing with the grand. We watch the steady worsening of both Leo's and June's situations, and we watch it with the kind of detached fascination with which we would watch water drain out of a sink. Strandquist is able to present everything to us with a kind of "here it is; make of it what you will" approach, and we watch, not unmoved, but not stirred to great passion either, for this matter-of-fact tale is far too real for us to allow ourselves that sort of intimacy. Strandquist could be describing any of us, and that is not a comfortable notion.

In fact, there is a certain kind of horror that comes from watching people's lives spiral out of control while simultaneously observing the minute details of the world around them as they descend. There is an unquestionable darkness about this story, but it is an honest darkness, one that resonates with an almost palpable familiarity. It's the kind of darkness I see in my own psyche every day, the kind that exists all around us at every moment. It frightens us more than any threat of war, terrorism, or financial collapse ever could. That's why most of us only ever look at it through the eyes of a writer of fiction.

The poetry of Strandquist's language stands in stark contrast to the situations it portrays. It makes the horror all the more horrible. It shines an eerie pink light on the real-ness of the real, giving the bright points an added vibrancy and the shadows more depth. It saunters casually along, dropping pretty syllables at every turn, but it never shies away from the sheer ordinariness of the things and events it portrays.

There is no criticism implicit in any of the above. That the story is able to achieve this "view through the microscope" is magnificent. Strandquist does not appear to want us to have any particular opinion about what we are reading. He does not try to sway us in any direction by injecting inordinate amounts of emotion into the text. He simply presents the scenes. This in itself is a striking achievement.

As a self-confessed reader of mainstream fiction, I did have trouble acclimatizing myself to some of the technical details of Strandquist's unusual novel. For example, the dialogue is all italicized. There are no quotation marks anywhere. I found this unnerving for some reason. I'm accustomed to seeing italics used to present a character's thoughts, not speech.

Upon reflection, however, this technique fits. Using italics to present speech has a similar effect to putting gauze over the lens of a camera. It makes the words a little bit less immediate, removes them from us somewhat. It makes us look at what is being said rather than hear it. In the context of this story, which presents everything to us in a neutral fashion, this method of dialogue works.

Another adjustment I had to make was the swiftness of the time and locale changes. I've read many books where even a short passage of time or a jump to a nearby location is indicated with a "scene break," usually a blank line between paragraphs. These breaks are few and far between in The Dreamlife of Bridges, and I simply had to get used to the fact that Strandquist is not pausing for anything in this story.

Adjustments aside, I think the only thing in the novel that really caused me a problem was the sudden change of June's status in the third chapter from supporting character to point-of-view character. We are introduced to June in the first chapter, and she does play a significant role right from the beginning, but she does not appear in any scenes without Leo until page 61 (nearly a third of the way into the novel), at which point she is suddenly a point-of-view character. I found this a bit jarring, and I wondered why Strandquist had chosen to do things this way.

The Dreamlife of Bridges is an unusual novel, however, and the fact that the author chose some unusual techniques is not surprising. I found it refreshing, in fact, despite my initial misgivings, and the book has piqued my interest in exploring more non-mainstream fiction, and thereby expanding my literary horizons.