Stories, unlike real life, make sense.
In a well-told story, choices have consequences: Pinocchio tells a lie, and so his nose gets longer. But our waking lives are shaped by countless forces, and so it’s impossible to figure out what’s causing what. Have I been fighting with my girlfriend because I hate my job? Or do I hate my job because I fight with my girlfriend?
That’s what makes Ben Segal’s Tunnels so invigorating: it’s an experimental novel without a clear sequence to read it in. It is a meditation on directionless wandering. But more than that, it is a book about the struggle to see through the dim chaos of life and find coherent shapes.
Each page of Tunnels consists of nine squares of text, laid out in a 3 x 3 grid, Brady Brunch style. The squares can be read in horizontal order (across the page), vertically (down the page), or “through” the book (e.g. from the top left square on page one, to the top left square of page two, and onward).
As an object, Tunnels has heft: at 9” x 8.5” and 412 pages, this feels more like a coffee table reference than a paperback novel. But that bulk gives a false impression. There aren’t that many words in Tunnels (about 45,000). Still, its sheer size compels you take your time with the pages.
It is like the Choose Your Own Adventure books, except that with the Choose Your Own Adventure series, the reader makes plot-based decisions: to open the door, go to page thirteen; to climb through the window, go to page six. Whereas with Tunnels,there is no basis for your choices: vertical, horizontal, through the page—the direction the reader takes is arbitrary. This forces you to amble through the book, rather than be stewarded through it via a traditional narrative arc.
I was admittedly skeptical about the central conceit of this book when I first cracked its spine. After all, to be “swept up” in a good book is a passive act. How could I get that experience in a book that asked me to take such an active role?
But Tunnels works. It is not just propulsive, but also moving.
There are vivid locations: a series of tunnels (of course), a barren desert, a diner. And there are characters, too, whose names the reader becomes familiar with: Frank, Palmer, Carson, Elizabeth—although these people wash together in the read.
Still, you get the sense at times that you are reading a traditional story. If you could just get a little closer to it, it would make sense: like eavesdropping on an intimate conversation through a thin wall. Then, the plot emerges, suddenly. The narrow passageways of text you were crawling through opens up into a well-crafted narrative that carries on for pages: Miles and Clara are on a first date, only Miles’ name is actually Frank and he doesn’t know how to tell her he’s been lying to her. Your thrill, as a reader, in linking up with a concrete storyline becomes itself part of your plot. Here on page ninety-five, as Miles tries to tell Sarah about this misunderstanding, you are also gaining clarity, and so you as witness to the scene are also his perfect sympathizer.
The logic of these cavernous half-stories doesn’t hold up in the harsh light of a close inspection: How did Miles and Clara meet? Why did he give her a false name at introduction? But while you are reading, these details don’t matter, because there is an emotional integrity to them that is of a higher order of importance. Segal’s prose is both confident, and (more importantly) approachable. Despite its experimental form, Tunnels is an unpretentious book.
This is partly because of the humor, which is oftentimes punny and culturally specific, contrasting well with the format. People go on long drives and listen to “Counting and Sheryl Crows.” At a café for cannibals, someone orders the “half-calf.”
And not every moment serves to reveal (or obscure) a plot. Many of the blocks of text operate as freestanding contemplations, in the vein of Sarah Manguso’s 300 Arguments. These squares are thematically linked to the larger motifs of the book, but otherwise serve as non-sequiturs: “One often thinks of the minotaur. The sad part is that the. If he were a minotaur, that would be one thing, but he isn’t just one of a species. He’s the whole species. A centaur is less monstrous because the form is normal for an entire population. The minotaur, alone, is monstrous. The novel form is always so,” says one such square.
This observation, like so many others in the story, is as moving as it is meta. As reader, I too am minotaur. Because there are so many ways to read Tunnels, I am consuming it in a pattern that is not just arbitrary but unique. I am not “a reader” of Tunnels; I am “the reader” of my particularly sequenced version of it. And so no one else will ever make sense of it in the way that I do.
Which is sad, and alienating, and profoundly odd … and also quite a bit like life.
Tunnels, by Ben Segal. Schism2, July 2024. 412 pages. $18.00, paper.
Adam Janos is a New York City-based writer and reporter whose words have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Tablet, and Narratively, amongst others. He currently teaches a theatre workshop at Fishkill Correctional Facility in upstate New York, where his students are writing and staging an adaptation of The Odyssey.
Check out HFR’s book catalog, publicity list, submission manager, and buy merch from our Spring store. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube. Disclosure: HFR is an affiliate of Bookshop.org and we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. Sales from Bookshop.org help support independent bookstores and small presses.
Heavy Feather Review 