The narrator of The Story of My Baldness is named Marek van der Jagt -- as is, ostensibly, the author of the novel. In fact, the novel was written by prolific and acclaimed young Dutch author Arnon Grunberg, perhaps taking the idea of getting into a character a bit too far.

As it turns out, The Story of My Baldness doesn't focus too much on Marek's baldness, either. Yes, he suffers from premature and extreme hair loss, but after opening the novel with this complaint and pinpointing when it started, baldness isn't mentioned until far into the book. But it is a story of laying bare, Marek revealing himself in all his disappointing mediocrity -- and, as he explains in the end, of all the descriptions he could have used in the title:

"Of everything that is lacking, my hair is the least, and that is why that delightful word "baldness" seemed best to me."

Marek is a student, and tutor, the youngest (and least promising) of three sons. His mother died three years earlier, when he was just eighteen, and his father has since remarried. Marek's baldness, and the story, essentially begin when he meets a woman who brings a bit of his mother back to him, and leads him to recall the past few years.

The Story of My Baldness is presented as a novel of a quest. Marek had a fascination with "the phenomenon of l'amour fou", a sort of passion without concern for anything else. He wanted to lose himself in that head over heels way -- but couldn't ever find it. But his concept of l'amour fou proves elusive wherever he looks:

"I devoured everything I could find about l'amour fou. In translation and in the original French, with the help of dictionaries. A great deal of what had been written about it turned out to be awfully dry and boring. I found that unbelievable."

Marek's teenage adventures on his quest are of the not unexpected sort -- though perhaps a bit more humiliating and disastrous than most ("Doesn't it get any bigger than that?" is definitely not a question one wants to hear at certain moments). Still, he manages for the most part -- helped by the fact that no one really pays all that much attention to what he does.

The Story of My Baldness is a confessional novel: Marek bares his soul and shares what he's done. Most of it is simply embarrassing, in a childish, innocent way, but not all: by the end it's clear why Marek's tale isn't merely hair-raising, but rather more. For the most part The Story of My Baldness tells a fairly amusing slightly dysfunctional family tale: Mom sleeps around, Dad isn't entirely focussed on the matters at hand, the stepmother successfully sells her book in country after country, Marek's brothers always destined for greater success than he is. In how it's tied up it becomes a bit more, as Marek's mediocre life is seen from a new vantage point.

There are the usual Grunberg cast of odd characters, quirky but not overblown, and there's a nice mix of incident, observation, and commentary. Everything moves along easily enough, but it's a cleverly written novel, sly and slightly disconcerting. Unusual, but worthwhile.