Laird Hunt: The Impossibly

«The first time we met, it was about a stapler, I think.»

Deadpan delivery and a sly eye for detail characterize the anonymous secret agent in Laird Hunt s tense, funny spy noir. When the nameless narrator botches an assignment for the clandestine organization that employs him, everyone in his life — including his new girlfriend — is revealed to be either true-blue, double operative, or both.

With the literary coyness of Paul Auster and the dark absurdity of Kafka, Hunt s debut is a daring, memory-driven narrative that is as fittingly spare as a bare ceiling light — and just as pendulous. On the surface, the narrator is a simple man, fixing his washer and dryer, strolling through city parks, falling in love at an office supply store. But in The Impossibly, the mundane gives way to outrageous misconduct, and with each unexpected visitor or cryptic note, the tension reaches tantalizing heights. As the narrator frugally doles out clues about his dangerous work in an unnamed European city, the reader inevitably becomes confidante and fellow gumshoe. The narrator s final assignment — to identify his own assassin — dismantles the reader s own analysis of the evidence.