If Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves gave the horror genre a postmodern facelift, then Only Revolutions reinvents the road novel while further pushing the limits of experimentation. At first glance, it would seem to be a veritable pastiche of random words strung together and arranged at the author’s leisure, but a closer look reveals a book that’s more controlled than its predecessor: the book is exactly 360 pages long, with every page containing ninety words. Even the title wasn’t pulled from a hat: in keeping with the “revolution” theme of the book, the publisher suggests alternating between narratives, reading eight pages of one story, then turning the book upside-down (or right-side up, depending on how you look at it) and reading eight pages of the other story.

And it’s a story that quite literally comes full circle. Where House of Leaves seemed to pay more attention to form than story, Only Revolutions juggles form, story, and language with aplomb. Sam and Hailey, both “allmighty sixteen and freeeeee,” are essentially telling the same story, but it’s the little things that separate the two narratives. Sam is described as having “green eyes flecked with gold,” so every O in Sam’s story is green; flip over to Hailey’s story and you’re given a girl who has ”gold eyes flecked with green,” so every O in her story is gold. (And when it comes to the human body, is there another organ that’s as perfectly round as the eye?)

To be sure, Only Revolutions is an ambitious novel that takes postmodernism to new heights, but it’s also more subtle than House of Leaves. Here, Danielewski pays careful—some might even say obsessive—attention to language; Only Revolutions isn’t a novel so much as an epic poem, replete with stanzas, alliteration, rhymes, and a head-spinning array of invented and mishmashed words, much like James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.

Eventually a chill. Patrons dwindle.
Seatings for lunches, dinners, slim.
—What did you do? snorts
VIARORONACCI. Yeah you.
—Leave her allone, Cabrón,
exiting BILL BEEZALI rasps.
I shy back but that’s a bust.
Slicking his hair over, VIARIRONACCI
advances through The St. Louis Cafe,
wending around scattered idlers. Impossible
to duck. All strut & front, slaying
no one with his props, but still
cocky enough to tug on his crotch with
that VIARARONACCI grin: —Want some?
—Tough luck.
Whereupon among these trife peeps,
he slaps me hard across the cheek,
turning me around.
VIAPOPONACCI even more riled
up by my shock and tears:
—You’ve pretty much zip to hold onto here.
All nappy & thin lipped. Purge bag on
stilts. Act now Miss. Cause I’m the shit.
Shack you, stack you, slosh your slit.

Only Revolutions is a exhilarating roadtrip through American history and a beautiful love story that literally makes you forget the outside world—I found myself reading slowly, whispering as I read, savoring the language and wordplay. It’s a book that begs to be read aloud, that leaves you breathless and finally ends with one of the most moving declarations of love in recent memory. Sam and Hailey are hard to keep up with, but if you happen to see them, don’t let them pass you by.