Has Mark Dunn Done it Again?

It almost sounds like a joke. In Mark Dunn's latest novel, Ibid: A Life (MacAdam/Cage, Mar.), there's an author's note telling how the original manuscript for a biography of Jonathan Blashette, a fictitious three-legged circus performer who encounters many real and imaginary historical figures over his 80 years, was accidentally destroyed by editor Pat Walsh in a bathing incident. That is, except for the footnotes. So, to placate a bestselling author, the editor offered to publish the footnotes as the book.

Though none of that actually happened, it's not so farfetched as the premise of the third novel by Dunn, who wowed booksellers with his quirky debut novel, Ella Minnow Pea, in which an island's language-loving inhabitants must adapt to a shrinking alphabet. But is all this wordplay just a little too gimmicky? Will the booksellers who made Ella a Book Sense Book of the Year nominee, a Barnes & Noble Great New Writers pick and Borders Original Voices Book of the Year winner go for Dunn's quirkiness again?

"When I heard it was written in footnotes, I thought, 'come on,' " said Jill Lamar, manager and editor of B&N's Great New Writers program. A confessed Dunn fan, she told PW, "I approached this book fairly tentatively—but he immediately engaged me. It's basically a snicker a page."

"It took me a couple of chapters to really get into reading in footnote form," said Susan Wasson from Bookworks, in Albuquerque, N.Mex. "But once I got the hang of it, it was easy."

Dunn, who has much experience working in libraries (including in the Rare Books room at the New York Public Library), explained that the mischievous nature of footnotes inspired him to write Ibid. "The author is allowed to sneak in little asides," he said. Still, Dunn worried about sustaining a narrative in footnote form.

"I think I was the only one not concerned," said Walsh. "After publishing two books that are quirky [Dunn's second novel, Welcome to Higby, hinges on Bible verses] and worked, I was as comfortable as I could be about a novel written entirely in footnotes." She described the appeal of the book as "trying to re-create in your head what the missing passage is, and the context. People have different takes on the character Jonathan because you are building the novel in the negative space, writing it as you go along."

Aware that Ibid has "hand-sell" written all over it, MacAdam/Cage has mailed approximately 4,000 galleys and plans a 30,000 first printing.