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10:04 by Ben Lerner is a fragmented narrative of its own creation, one that dismantles its place within literature as it claims it. It forces readers to step back and re-evaluate time and space. For this reason, it demands to be approached on its own terms.

An attempt at extracting a plot might read like this: our narrator is an overtly veiled version of the author himself. While fretting about his recent diagnosis of a maybe-there, maybe-not cardiac condition that maybe-will, maybe-won’t prove fatal, he receives a hefty advance for a novel he has not written. Meanwhile, he attempts to impregnate his best friend via artificial insemination, a process that falters due to his abnormal but nonetheless viable sperm. The novel begins and ends with hurricanes which create an uncanny atmosphere that dissipates when the storms fail to live up to their hype. “What happens only kind of happened” is a theme beaten into the novel, emphasised by the ability of shards of information to alter the past. The status of reality starts to feel rather dubious.

Focused on what has not happened, 10:04 is not a breakneck read. Humorous but inescapably academic, our narrator settles easily into literary pretension. Neither the characters nor the plot are emotionally compelling. That isn’t the point.

In a revealing scene, Ben describes receiving a life-changing email in the bathroom of Crate and Barrel, the sensation of “the world rearranging itself around me while I processed words from a liquid-crystal display”. With 10:04, Lerner achieves a similar effect.