So, nobody’s really brought up genre or school for this book, which I find interesting.

I would clbumify this as postmodern academic fiction. This matters because, although academics will claim otherwise, there are many tropes and stylistic requirements that must be met in order for a book to be recognized and respected as such. Postmodernism is something of a dog-and-pony-show as far as style. It can frequently end up feeling like the writer is making the choices that they make simply to prove they can do some things. Case and point, the modest deployment of stream-of-consciousness narrative here. shishi’s post reminded me of that, since stream of consciousness is characterized by lengthy, punctuation free sections.

Other examples of style incorporated from other genres or sources would include the funny names (slapstick humor imo) and the elaborate conspiracy and her subsequent follow-up on it (detective fiction).

Thus, to academic critics, this book is a “tour de force”, and to many casual readers, it is a dense, incomprehensible mess.

Since putting things in context is popular in academics now, I just thought I’d add my take on the context of this book.