Given that the Internet is such an all-pervasive presence, it seems odd that nobody has attempted to write an intelligent dotcom novel: until now. Andrew Crumey's fourth novel is outrageously clever, brilliantly innovative and riotously funny. When the crusty eponymous hero ventures into Dixon's to buy a PC, he is asked by an assistant whether he wishes to do word processing. "I gather," he writes to his (deceased - don't ask) friend, "this is a term used to denote what was known in our day as 'writing'. I told him I would use the machine primarily for reading, an archaic habit the correct name of which I didn't know . . ." Mr Mee sets out to search the Internet for an 18th-century encyclopaedia of philosophy - and discovers, of course, a world of cyber-hoaxers and online pornography. But that's just one of a trio of narratives. Add in an academic infatuated with - surprise, surprise - one of his students, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (in person), and the result is a series of ingenious, maddening, smile-inducing Chinese puzzles.
