THE IMPOSSIBLE BIRD

A zany premise, coupled with realistic characters drawn into a confusing reality, results in a tour de force that handles themes of death, loss and love with panache and a dash of humor. We begin and end with the death of the two main characters, Daniel Glynn, a literature professor, and his brother, Mike, a hotshot film director—only they don't know they're dead. A mysterious stranger charges Daniel to find Mike, and holds Daniel's son, Sean, hostage to ensure his compliance. Meanwhile, Mike is set on the same path: to find Daniel. O'Leary (Door Number Three; The Gift) alternates between the points of view of Daniel and Mike as they traverse an increasingly bizarre landscape and slowly come to realize the truth: they're pawns in a game, with two factions at odds with one another, each with its own agenda—to end the hideous, utopic "afterlife" they're trapped in, courtesy of aliens working through volunteer hummingbirds, or to preserve it. But Mike and Daniel are special: the aliens that control the afterlife have met them before, and now they have a connection with Sean. The author plays with language, but the nonstandard use of colons and his sentence fragments distract more than anything, although the prose is otherwise clear and direct. The complex structure and layering of textual clues (including an odd recurring character, a woman in a muumuu) allow the reader to make inferences before O'Leary fully clarifies events. The themes of love and loss resonate strongly in this deeply affecting book. Agent, Susan Ann Protter.(Jan. 16)