This debut novel from Toronto’s Bryna Wasserman is a strange and beguiling tale that showcases considerable ambition and emerging talent. The Naked Island follows Rachel Gold, a young Jewish woman, on a trip around the world as she tries to come to terms with a lover’s betrayal.

Along the way she becomes involved with Kifli Talib, a Singaporean haunted by spirits and secrets. The relationship between these two broken people spirals quickly into a confrontation with the nature of identity and the origins of evil as they wrestle with Zulkanyan, the Malay spirit who is intimately entangled in both their pasts.

Writing in a nimble style that approaches prose poetry allows Wasserman to move fluidly between continents, centuries, the worlds of the living and the dead, and the realms of the magical and the real. The novel makes stops in the slums of India, the mountains of Nepal, and the excessively polite culture of Singapore. The action never rests long enough in one place to become comfortable, keeping the characters constantly off-balance. In the end, the locations tend to merge together like a jumbled pile of vacation photos, with only Rachel and Kifli remaining in the memory.

Wasserman trained as a boxer, which may explain her fighter’s instinct for physiological detail, the way people move, and the anatomy of pain and vulnerability. The Naked Island shows the world as a lonely planet of beds where characters are at the apex of their physical, emotional, and spiritual vulnerability. In sickness, love, and sleep, the novel is at its best when the characters are on their backs. But Wasserman has a tendency to move a bit too quickly, and the blows she lands are jabs rather than haymakers. The knockout punch is never quite delivered