Dear reader: With Acts of God, Kanan Gill becomes the latest author to address us

Acts of God review: Being a comedian, author Kanan Gill is able to merge fantasy with the funnies – it is like slapstick meets standup.

Stories started out as an oral tradition. Kings loved to be praised in verse or exaggerated fables of valour. Little morality tales and religious rhymes began to do the rounds. One imagines bards breaking into ditties and lore, legends and ballads in the middle of a mud path, with people huddled around them. Today, audio versions of the latest novels are delivered right into the customers’ ears. And yet some storytellers are able to make it an intimate act. The fourth wall is frequently broken so that the illusion of stage or page disappears, and the story directly passes from teller to listener.

HarperCollins India; 364 pages; Rs 399

Dave Eggers in his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which is part autobiographical and part fiction, not only talks to the reader but also breaks down memories into the real and unreal. There is a scrutiny element to his own prose that pushes this book above the ordinary. Actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Fleabag, a television series that had started out as a one-woman show, talks to the audience continuously, even when she’s in bed with someone. Being taken into confidence thus, the viewer is pulled in quickly and irrevocably into the ups and downs of her life, never to recover.

Writers not just adopt the first-person voice, they reveal how self-aware they are of the double-edged process, of writing and being read. Into this privately curated artistic club where writers share rather than narrate comes Kanan Gill’s debut novel Acts of God. In this book, according to the blurb, ‘Vacuous detective P. Manjunath and his assistant, Heng, wrestle with an inscrutable mystery pickling their world, but their witless endeavors are pitted against the smartest person in existence – self-disgraced scientist Dr Krishna, who creates and destroys the universes the duo invariably inhabits. Luckily for them, they have no idea about this – or most other things.’

In Storage Instructions For This Book, Gill advises, ‘Keep this book in a cool, dry place.’ In Allergen Warning, he tells us, ‘The author sneezed repeatedly – both on screen and paper – during the construction of this book.’ In the Preface, we are solemnly informed, ‘The author presents this preface to disseminate some important information, but primarily to annoy you.’ Once the actual story starts, any personal nods are to be found in the absurd imagery thrown at us in quick succession. Being a comedian, Gill is able to merge fantasy with the funnies – it is like slapstick meets standup.

Also read: Comedian Kanan Gill: 'I’ve had many novels sputter and die in notebooks and on hard disks'

In the last very chapter, where he tells us he isn’t interested in showing or telling, he reveals he was typing with emotional ink. And in the Afterword (‘Of course there’s an afterword.’) we learn ‘All of time is printed and numbered and coming’. Here is a story full of science and silly things, but most of all, it is a story that is always conscious of itself – in a good way.

This tone of deliberate frankness and constant throwaway comments break the fourth wall by turning fiction into teamwork, where author and reader are aware of each other. We are in this together.