Tor Books, $34.95, 315 pp, hardcover.

Cory Doctorow is nothing if not provocative. In his previous science-fiction novels, he's imagined rival gangs with patches not of neighbourhood but of time zones (Eastern Standard Tribe) and a Disney World where you can upload your consciousness (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom).

Doctorow is provocative on-line, too. Fans of Boingboing.net, his compendium of links championing free speech and the truly unhinged, will agree. ("Remote-controlled humans" and "Suppressed film of 1945 nuclear attacks to air" are two recent posts.) Those fans will also appreciate the eerily familiar description of Alan, the protagonist of Doctorow's latest novel, a techy fantasy set in Toronto's Kensington Market and north of Kapuskasing. "He could wax rhapsodic about the tortured prose in a Victorian potboiler, the nearly erotic curve of a beat-up old table leg, the voluminous cuffs of an embroidered jacket."

That is perhaps where similarities between Doctorow and his avatar end. Someone is so rife with ideas, energy, and oddities, it's easy to get lost in description. One example: "Alan's father was a mountain, and his mother was a washing machine-he kept a roof over their heads and she kept their clothes clean. His brothers were: a dead man, a trio of nesting dolls, a fortune-teller, and an island."

As well as Alan's fairy-tale beginnings, we come up against a neighbour with wings, various murders and attempted murders, and an ongoing attempt to WiFi the market in the name of free speech. Like Boingboing.net, the narrative to be gleaned is not linear, though metaphoric hay can be made of the notion that Alan's offbeat parents point to the self-creation all artists must undergo.

Fantasy trappings notwithstanding, Someone is Doctorow's most realist novel to date, both his most linear and most peculiar. Its pleasures derive not despite the logical jump-cuts and defiant tangents, but because of them. Not everyone likes Alan in the novel; one character complains, "I had to know the why.…From the outside, it's impossible to tell if you're winking because you've got a secret, or if you've got dust in your eye, or if you're making fun of someone who's winking, or if you're trying out a wink to see how it might feel later." It's a drive that compels me as well.