Wacky. Whimsical. Weird.

Obsession is a funny thing in that you can never tell exactly when, how, and where you’re obsessed since you’re so deep inside the feelings, the sensations, and the moods that you’re unable to come up for any sort of air, especially when your entire being feels absolutely sublimated to the object of your obsession. It’s almost if the act of obsession is the actual obsession, not the person, place, or thing that allegedly holds your attention by its throat, even though that person, place, or thing feels like the most important part of your life, more important than breathing, eating, drinking, school, work, obligations, responsibilities, friendships, family, hobbies, war, peace, pets, flowers, and being your own independent being. Or at least that’s what I feel when reading Ada by Mark Haber, his newest book published by Coffee House Press, the latest volume in his ongoing literary investigation into obsessive people who set aside everything that seemingly comprises everyday life, humdrum banalities, commonplace activities, and so-called normalcy to vault themselves headlong, feetfirst, bellyflopped, and cannonballed into a pursuit, a drive, a compulsion, and the deepest of all possible desires that confounds the people around them yet gives them a profound purpose that defies definition. In this slim volume, a minor noble named Gerard Desacroux IV waxes increasingly frantic and absurd about a woman named Ada whom he briefly met when living in Paris before he was compelled by paternal obligation to return to his family estate so that he could take charge of the village, the villagers, the trade, the economy, the politics, the military conflict, the employees when he would much rather be coddling his baser instincts and emptying the historic coffers because their few fleshly nights together utterly transformed how he interacted with the world. The book romps in one unbroken soliloquy as Gerard lambasts his manservant, mistreats his member, ignores his commitments, hides from his responsibilities, damages his property, and devises unhinged chicanery all on the premise that Ada’s eventual visit will change his life for the better and fulfill his obsession so that he can somehow achieve some manner of earthly success, even if all that means is he can have Ada in his life, despite the fact that she is currently married to someone far more prosperous than he is, as he’s been forced to leave his beloved Paris for a woebegone part of rural France full of people, places, and things unworthy of his attention, much less his obsession.