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Intriguing setting and story concept: a building full of misanthropes and cranky lonely hearts gets their predictable, comfortable world turned upside down when a new tenant arrives. Observatory Mansions has a lot going for it: atmospheric, neoveau-gothic backdrop and a cast of quirky, twisted characters who live hiding behind the heavy drapes of regret and longing. Edward Carey tenderly reveals their stories to us in a meandering fashion, as if to ease us into this uncomfortable, mold-ridden world. So I had high expectations; I expected a kind of parallel, grotty magical universe akin to Alice in Wonderland or something written by Shirley Jackson.

Our reluctant hero and narrator is Francis Orme. Francis lives with and cares for his parents and is by profession a "stillness" artist, first working in a wax museum and then as one of those freelance human statues for tourists. When the interloper, Anna Tap, arrives, Francis rallies a few other OM residents, conniving through wonder, fear, and curiosity, to discover who this stranger is. As they investigate her, something happens. They remember things. A kind of fumbling in the dark happens to these sad misfits who have turned their backs to the world, a kind of breaking of the frozen sea inside.

Could totally be profound and deep right? Against this setup, Carey weaves a strange world that is dominated by objects. Francis Orme et al. are the things they carry, the things they own. Francis himself collects objects he finds significant; the last few pages of the novel are devoted to an encyclopedic inventory, a cherished listing of everything in Francis's collection. In essence, his life. One of the more discomfiting things about the new arrival Anna is that she doesn't own very many things (they break into her apartment to snoop around), mostly items of clothing. It baffles Francis. One of the more disturbing characters is Twenty, named so because that's the apartment number she lives in. Twenty owns a dog collar, which in a twisted rendering, defines her identity and behavior. (Yes, a feral dog-woman character lives at Observatory Mansions.)

Where the book failed for me was in the writing style. I couldn't get into it, even though I thoroughly acknowledge the literary necessity of it. Francis Orme likes objects. People seem to be subsumed by the objects around them. So Carey writes in this repetitive, droning style, which reflects the mental state of the narrator and his sense of order and things-in-their-place-ness. You'll get lists and lists of things, which in their own way is the only way our emotionally stunted narrator can tell his story. In that way, the book almost feels like an inventory of human frailties. It's got a very visual and tactile feel to it, which makes me think this might have worked better as a graphic novel. (Do we need all the text and narration?)

Ironically the book's clipped, declarative style is what others found so captivating. Really?! I'm flummoxed. I'm a fan of the postmodern sleight of hand or two, but only when the trickery is filled with a little more intrigue than what we get in this book. You can't carry a story by just throwing a bunch of grotesque characters together, no matter how charming they are. Something needs to happen.

Sadly, I was largely immune to the charms of this oddball, but I admire its ambitions.