Living a quiet life, the narrator enjoys his job working at the bakery and spends his evenings with his extensive vinyl record collection. He loves to rearrange his synth music albums, getting them into just the right order, while he listens to his favorite tracks. He’s not always alone though. He has friends, and sometimes they ask him to join them at the record store or the bar. Or his high school friend Magnus calls him up and invites him to a circus.

He agrees to go with Magnus to the circus, but he’s not entirely comfortable there. And when Magnus volunteers to help the magician with a disappearing trick, his friend is even more concerned. Magnus goes to the stage, and in the middle of the trick, he waves to his friend as if to say goodbye, and then he truly disappears. His friend sits through the rest of the circus, waiting for him to come back, but Magnus never does. Once the circus performance is complete, he still waits for his friend Magnus, but still he doesn’t appear. He finally heads home, not at all happy about how his friend has acted so rudely.

At home, he calls Magnus to tell him how he didn’t appreciate being abandoned at the circus, but Magnus’s phone is busy. He tries again later, and still gets the busy signal. The next day, the line is still busy. When he goes by Magnus’s apartment, no one answers the door. This goes on for several days, and then he gets a late night phone call. No one speaks, but he can hear someone else there. He calls out for Magnus, but there is no answer, no words, just silence and the feeling that someone else is there.

As the weeks go by, he tries to find his friend but cannot. Mutual friends bring up the possibility of suicide. But he doesn’t think his friend would do that. He thinks back through the time he’s known Magnus, starting in school and continuing, off and on, through the years. They would spend hours together, talking about music. And now Magnus is just gone.

Jonas Karlsson’s newest novel, The Circus, is a surreal novel about identity and understanding. Not unlike his novel The Room, this is a beautiful but strange story of what we see when we look in the mirror. It’s short but moving, a study of unhappiness and isolation, camaraderie and healing.

I really like Karlsson’s books. But know that they are mind-bending. It makes me feel like I feel looking at a painting by Magritte. It’s lovely and bright and mostly makes sense, and then there’s the part that makes you look at life upside-down, and you’re never quite the same, but in the best possible way. Give him a try. You won’t be the person at the end of the book that you were when you started it, but you’ll like the person you are a lot more.

Galleys for The Circus were provided by Random House Publishing Group through NetGalley, with many thanks.