As a result, being presented with a book that genuinely fits either of those modifiers is a great relief – and being handed anything that lives up to both is almost unheard of.
Yet here we are: the fittingly named Composition No. 1 by Marc Saporta – a book completely ahead of its time, both in the 1960s when it was first published and in the here and now; truly the very first of its kind and easily the most interesting and original book since Padgett Powell's The Interrogative Mood...which it preceded by well over 40 years.

Described by its publisher, Visual Editions, the posse responsible for Jonathan Safran Foer's incredible die-cut novel Tree of Codes, as “quite literally a book that comes in a box with loose pages.” And you can't fault them for that. But Composition No. 1 is much more than that – it's a living narrative eco-system, each page a self-contained literary biosphere, in constant flux at the whim of the reader. Saporta's novel is an unbound set of unnumbered pages to be read in any order under the premise that it still make sense. An incredibly bold statement, bordering on visionary, and incredible fucking difficult to pull off. But easy enough to test: “She has a clear precise voice. She makes no special effort to seem friendly. Marianne's scream saw through the night...Her nails lacerate the arm, each leaving a burning line.” “Black flashes streak the white night, in which big red flowers burst into bloom suddenly, all at once. Marianne is fussing around with her pots and pans.” - two endings and subsequent beginnings taken from four separate pages of Composition No 1. - neither stilted in their transition nor completely incongruous in their content. It's the same methodology used by Mediums and Psychics – the much celebrated science of vaguery. But Saporta isn't Psychic Sally; he doesn't exploit the weak or the desperate with his novel – in the world of Composition No. 1, the reader has the power. It's like Tom Uglow says “If the story doesn’t capture you, maybe you should start again.”

Beautifully presented and intelligently coupled with the diagrams of Salvador Plascencia; a book in a box that thinks outside the box.