COMING IN APRIL.
What a strange and brilliant delight this novel is. Short Circuit reads like a puzzle box that somehow solves itself while you’re watching. Wolf Haas builds two mirrored stories, a man waiting for an electrician and a mafia informant fearing for his life, and folds them together until they start reflecting, refracting, and looping back in on each other.

Franz Escher, alone in his apartment with a broken outlet, starts reading about Elio Russo, a criminal informant hiding from revenge. Meanwhile, Elio lies awake in a cell reading a book about Franz, the man waiting for the electrician. Around and around it goes until you lose track of which story belongs to whom.

What could have been a gimmick instead becomes a strangely emotional meditation on control, guilt, and fate. Haas plays with the mechanics of storytelling the way M. C. Escher plays with perspective, and by the end, the reader feels the same vertigo you get staring at an impossible staircase.

The humor is dry, the pacing quick, and the writing precise. Haas trusts his readers to lean into confusion, and that trust pays off. This is not a book you skim. It’s one you surrender to.
#harpervia #wolfhaas #shortcircuit

Franz Escher, funeral orator, needs an electrician. A serviceman arrives to fix an outlet, and Franz reactivates the circuit breaker at the most inopportune moment, electrocuting the electrician. Escher calls emergency services and while waiting he dips into a mafia novel, as one does.

Elio Russo is being released from prison. His testimony helped put away 27 mob bosses and his departure from prison is coming with a spanking new identity. While waiting on the judge to arrive and assist with extrication, Elio dips into a novel about a funeral orator, as one does.

Escher reads Elio’s story and vice versa. The concept sounds simple enough but the execution is exceptional.

Short Circuit switches between protagonists as smoothly as a slight shift in a camera aperture. With a gentle refocus we move back and forth between the two different stories told in parallel. One plot is rooted in the aftermath of Escher killing a mysterious electrician, the other follows Elio as he changes his name, surgically reconstructs his face and opens a bicycle repair shop.

The plots trickle into each other with creativity and innovation. This is a book which subverts most norms of a novel while never forgetting to stay entertaining. Short Circuit will satisfy readers looking for a traditional story and dazzle those impressed by coloring outside the lines.

Highly recommended. This is well done puzzle novel in the vein of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and Iain Pears Arcadia. Thanks to NetGalley and HarperVia for a review copy.