In this collection of linked short stories, Montreal author Claude Lalumière imagines a used bookstore, Lost Pages, that exists somewhere in an alternate-reality version of his hometown. (It seems to have no fixed address, and the doorway leading into it appears and disappears.) Lucas and Aydee discover the store as children; as adults, Lucas takes over as manager and Aydee becomes his assistant.

Lost Pages operates as a kind of metafictional nexus, a focal point for Lalumière’s mythic multiverse. The stories involve a host of nightmarish creatures, led by a tentacled demon with the appropriately Lovecraftian name Yamesh-Lot, locked in an eternal struggle with the feathered angel armies of the “Green Blue and Brown God” (a deity that is only “supposedly benevolent”). This conflict frequently spills over into our world, and some apparently “normal” characters, including a young monster-hunter named Billy, are able to cross over in the opposite direction. In the coda Lalumière himself invades his own text.

The Door to Lost Pages is a weird, entrancing book, informed by a unique vision. It’s told in a plain, fairy-tale style, but includes lots of steamy sex as well. Throughout, Lalumière displays a fascination with altered states of mind, often induced by dreams, drug use, or sex. The doors of perception are occasionally blown outward in orgasmic epiphanies: “Sandra loses all sense of herself; she experiences life – simultaneously, chaotically, beautifully – through the bodies of countless creatures.” For other characters, elevation takes the more serene form of being lost in a good book – or a magical bookstore. Either way, it makes for a good trip.