Brian Wicker has written a very curious book. A rough summary of its contents will indicate the obvious sense in which it’s curious: the second part consists of six critical studies, of Lawrence, Joyce, Waugh, Beckett, Robbe-Grillet and Mailer; the first, theoretical, part includes an analysis of metaphor and analogy in relation to Saussure and Chomsky, a comparison of homopathic and contiguous magic with myths and fairly-tales, an excursus on causality in science linked with comments on angels and ecology, and a chapter that brings together discussions of religious language, Whitehead and Teilhard, and the differing narrative structures of Old and New Testament stories. It’s a brave author and publisher who can expect a readership for such a work. But it’s the kind of argument that links these components that I find really curious, since I remain very unclear just what Wicker is arguing for. There are two major difficulties: the overall argument seems to be trying to establish a kind of natural theology, a queer kind of proof that God exists, though Wicker’s formulations of his case never quite commit him to this; and secondly some of his basic arguments seem to me so dubious that, given my respect for Wicker’s previous work, I can only conclude that one of us is deeply muddled but remain uncertain which.