Melville House, 256 pages, paperback, $11.96

You wake up and sleep clings to your face with the tenacity of an angry cat. Work awaits, but it seems like someone decided to play a prank on you by gluing your eyelids shut. Like so many mornings before, you stumble to the bathroom and turn on the faucet. The cold water on your face feels like a thousand miniature needles are being jabbed into your cheeks. It takes your breath away for a second. The water drips away, your eyes finally open wide, and air rushes into your lungs. What you just experienced was slightly uncomfortable, but it was also self-imposed, strangely enjoyable, and left you feeling refreshed. Well, the literary world offers a version of that: reading Tao Lin’s work.

Lin will be releasing his new novel in early June. When I found out, I remembered that I’d never gotten around to checking out his previous novel, Richard Yates. As soon as I started reading it, the questions started: What’s wrong with this guy? How in the hell does he manage to write with such electricity? Is this a story about nothing or a superb deconstruction/reconstruction of a love story? Did I just read that sentence?

Despite its title, Richard Yates has nothing to do with writer Richard Yates. Instead, the narrative swirls around a young couple and their bizarre humor, love, and tedium. Dakota Fanning and Haley Joel Osment are together and, when not together, they spend most of their time chatting on Gmail and sending each other text messages. This might sound ideal, bit there’s more to it than that. For starters, neither one has a car or money. and Dakota Fanning’s mother disapproves of the relationship (their discrepancy in age being an important factor). Although those things are serious, what truly keeps the young couple from achieving happiness together is the way they allow their ennui to corrode their every thought, plan, and action. Their affair constantly hovers above a deadly pit, but their gloomy personalities and apparent fear of loneliness somehow cancel each other out and allow the two youngsters to stay together.

Lin is a very entertaining writer and this story constantly moves despite the fact that most of the problems Dakota Fanning and Haley Joel Osment have to face are minor and that there is no plot. Also, one of the things that make the author’s prose stand out is the way he brings out the uncanny from the epicenter of what’s going on and allows it to shine. This is not to say he writes weird things for the sake of weird things, but rather that he brings out extremely funny/strange/awkward sentences that fit inside the conversations between the characters perfectly. Here’s a taste:

“I want my baby to beat me into submission with a salmon.”

This one comes a few dozen pages later:

“Cheese beasts like anything in nugget form. Nuggets is a scary word. My brother has a bottle of ear piercing cleaner in his bathroom. I’m confused.”

Richard Yates might be nothing more than a sadly funny exploration of relationships today. Then again, it might also be a very intelligent text that offers an in-depth look at modern nihilism, young anger, confusion, sex, lies, selfishness, and subdued emotions. Despite the possibilities, one thing is clear: this is a somewhat hypnotic, wonderfully entertaining, and minimalist narrative that deserves to be read.

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Gabino Iglesias is writer, journalist, and book reviewer living in Austin, TX. He’s the author of Gutmouth and a few other things no one will ever read. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.