Days with Diam

In this imaginative, cleverly constructed novel by a leading contemporary Danish writer, much is related to Mendel's work in heredity. Not that anything has scientific certainty: the work can turn absurd or more often hilarious at any moment. A person who disappears one instant, reappears as the ghost of his former self the next. The narrator, for instance, evolves into alternate selves with only one thing in common--an obsession with an ever-changing woman named Diam, who acts as a muse, lover, bitch-goddess and figment of the imagination. Madsen's thought-provoking story--``a kaleidoscopic picture of the possibilities I have felt within myself''--raises fascinating questions about the permeable border between reality and imagination, and about the ways we create and recreate ourselves in life and in fiction. The arrangement of chapters in the form of a genealogical tree seems baffling (what is this, some kind of genetic code? we cry), the writer explains that it is not his intention to make the letters signify anything and that the stories can be read in any order. One thing is certain: having finished Madsen's book, readers will look at fiction in a new light. (July)