then, what do you think it is? How would you classify it? Can it be classified?

Its hard to classify this book for me. I was not particularly disturbed in a horrific way, simply because the storyline was too disjointed and I could not place myself in the situations of any of the characters. I think the term "cult classic" as has been mentioned before, fits well with this story. Science Fiction would also fit because of the modern day technical arena that the story sits in sometimes.

This is a good question, Krysondra.

It is certainly psychological and perhaps in the vein of experimental science fiction, and yet I cannot so far characterize it as science fiction. Perhaps psychological fantasy. There is an undertone that reminds me of Stanislaw Lem’s writing. “Solaris” comes to mind, but not directly, having to do with the nature of the mind and alien sentience. Perhaps paranormal intelligence, in this case. (I haven’t read far enough to decide if this fits at all.)

Another of Lem’s books contains a short story concerning two spies, wandering around in a labyrinth of stairs, that combines mystery, fantasy and suspense with darkly humorous psychological thriller - the author playing mind games with the reader. At moments, I can’t help being reminded of “The Shining” and the ballroom.

I’ll stick with those impressions for the moment until I have read further into the book.

Well......... To be absolutely honest.......... I don't know!

I suppose you could call it fantasy, but probably this is just the easy solution. It clearly is a fantastic story, but that doesn't say much for the book, does it?

As I said in another thread, it didn't work as a horror story for me. I then googled it and found that someone has even described it as a love story! Or as a satire of academic criticism (I actually loved that and I really admired the effort required to construct all these titles of articles in the footnotes).

But my favourite description was definitely that one:

genre-bending