Wonderfull is the kind of novel that gives magic realism a bad name. Oswald Brodie, the narrator, begins by exhorting readers to flick their lights on and off if we hear him, and then goes on to tell a lot of stories that are centred around a small town called Garfax, somewhere on the Atlantic coast. It is not until the end of the book that we learn that – spoiler alert! – Oswald is transmitting on a ghost radio frequency after he escapes from Garfax, which has been removed from the world by “government historians.” But we should have expected something like that, because Oswald’s mother has the gift of second sight, his father literally sleepwalks through life, and his kitchen is full of dead relatives constantly playing a game of dominoes that has gone on for decades.

William Neil Scott may be trying to follow in Marquez’s footsteps, but he has not grasped the fact that the “realism” part of the genre means that the writer must follow the logic of the facts he has laid out as background for his story. The facts jump around here, however: for example, Scott has a character who can drive a car early in the narrative, but five years and 120 pages later much is made about her learning how to drive.

Scott also seems to be hinting that he’d like us to see broader connotations in his text. A character named Gregory Peck rents out small boats, for example, and anybody who’s seen Moby Dick is bound to think of Captain Ahab and go looking for further Melvillian echoes. But, alas, like so much else in this book, it’s just a red herring, not a white whale.

To give credit where credit is due, it must be noted that Scott has Oswald tell his stories with gusto, one incident following another at breakneck speed. That’s not enough to make Wonderfull recommended reading, though.