Admirers of Michel Basilières’ Black Bird, which won the 2003 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, have been waiting for a follow-up for more than a decade. Apparently, it’s not coming. According to a throwaway line in the preface to A Free Man, the author “gave up on the second novel” and “was contemplating a life of minimum-wage labour.” Yes, you read that right: in the preface to his second novel, Basilières claims to have given up on his second novel. A Free Man is that sort of book.

The story – apart from the framing preface and the footnotes throughout – takes the form of a discourse told by Skid Roe, a schlubby, misanthropic bookseller and old friend of Basilières’ narrator. Skid arrives unbidden at the narrator’s Toronto apartment late one night. It’s been more than a decade since the two have seen each other, and Skid has a bottle of wine, some weed, and a story to tell. The pair proceed to get high, and Skid starts to talk.

Normally, there are few things more wearisome than being the sober recipient of a stoned monologue, but that’s not the case here. It’s not the contents of Skid’s story – including a sexy fellow bookseller who works in amateur porn and a time-travelling, shape-shifting robot from the future – which, to be fair, are relatively standard stoner meanderings. Rather, the attraction here is in the way Basilières handles Skid’s voice. Neither the narrator nor the reader necessarily believes what Skid is saying, but he weaves his tale so enticingly, so convincingly, it’s impossible not to be swept up in it.

At least in the moment. A Free Man is the literary equivalent of a nightlong bender: once it passes, the reader will remember the experience, but question everything about it. What did it mean? Did it mean anything at all? There are no proper answers to those questions, which is to Basilières’ considerable credit: A Free Man is a singular experience, ultimately inexplicable and ineffable, with the quality of a waking dream.