Russell Smith is one of those rare figures on the Canadian cultural scene who has the capacity to really enrage people. From far-flung Globe and Mail readers, who see him as an arrogant Toronto art snob, to Toronto art snobs, who write him off as Leah McLaren with a Y chromosome, people from all walks of life seem to find him objectionable.

I might as well come out of the closet here: I kind of like Russell Smith. His novels (remarkably in this day and age) have actual plots and characters. He’s a clear-eyed social and cultural observer. And – rarest of all qualities in Canadian writers – he is witty and sometimes even mean.

All of Smith’s familiar strengths are evident in Muriella Pent, which covers some of the same turf as his two previous novels, the excellent How Insensitive and its less inspired follow-up, Noise. But Smith has also broadened his canvas to include not only pierced clubbers and scenester journalists but earnest Rosedale matrons and elder Caribbean poets. A social satire of surprising nuance and maturity, Muriella Pent is a real step forward for the dandyish Mr. Smith.

At the outset of the new book, a highly politicized arts committee must award a grant to bring a distinguished international novelist to Toronto for a six-month residence. The lead candidate is one Marcus Royston, an Oxford-educated Caribbean poet once known for his groundbreaking post-colonial writings.

Royston hasn’t published anything of note in decades, and his application appears to be largely composed of bemused jibes at the committee’s questions (which focus as much on any discrimination he may have suffered as on his writing). But an incoming conservative government has threatened to pull the program’s funding, and Royston also happens to be the only serious applicant for the position. Backed into a corner, the committee reluctantly decides to accept his application.

Enter Muriella Pent. A wealthy socialite and recent widow, the pent-up Pent has insinuated her way onto the arts committee, hoping that involvement in literary matters will lend some shape to her long, empty days. The other members of the arts committee more or less despise the woman, but they need her – the only lodgings they have for Royston are in a spare wing of Pent’s rambling ersatz-Tudor pile in the wealthy white enclave of Stillwell Park.

Naturally, hijinks ensue. Upon his arrival, Royston quickly alienates the members of the arts committee, and much of the city’s left-wing press, by refusing to accept their gospel that literature must be about issues of victimization and oppression. But he’s equally unpalatable to Pent’s stodgy, unconsciously racist neighbours, who are appalled by the ethnically diverse range of young musicians, sculptors, photographers, and grad students who begin visiting the house.

In short, Smith makes fun of everyone. He’ll use the non-conformist Royston to make fun of the arts committee’s ludicrously rigid politics, but then suddenly undermine the poet’s authority by showing how his arguments play into the hands of the right-wing press, which sees his stance as support for its own campaigns against left-leaning artists who would dare challenge the establishment.

Smith peppers the narrative with a kaleidoscope of documents – from Royston’s smartass application to the committee to some of Muriella’s feeble attempts at fiction to a poorly written letter of complaint by one of the committee’s politicos. These documents add to the novel’s sense of openness and play. So too does Smith’s rich use of language, which can turn on a dime from lush and expansive to curt and cutting.

The novel is not without problems. The two visitors to the house – young English majors Brian and Julia – are interesting secondary characters who become embroiled in an improbable love quadrangle with Muriella and Royston. The sexual intrigues serve a thematic purpose, underlining the way in which politics are often just a veil for personal and sexual obsessions. But Smith seems a bit too desperate here to shock readers with his outrageousness.

Muriella Pent doesn’t quite resolve itself into a satisfying whole, but there’s enough here to recommend this flawed, slightly offensive novel over many works of surpassing good taste.