Jim Giraffe is about sexually repressed science fiction writer, Scott Spectrum, who is haunted by a (filthy-) talking giraffe (Jim Giraffe) who, incidentally, sometimes wears underpants on his head.

The purpose of this haunting, so Jim says, after showing Scott a Dickensian-style vision of his past, present and future on video, is to save Scott's life. If Scott wants to prevent himself from death by heart failure, he must perform every act in the lovemaker's lexicon.

Sound silly? Well it is. Give it a go, and you'll find yourself repeatedly baffled, but you'll be simultaneously slapping your thigh with laughter at a riot of bewildering and wonderfully odd images, conjured from Daren King's fascinating imagination.

Read the first line, "I have of late been visited by a ghost giraffe", and there you have it - you're immediately and unavoidably on the rollercoaster, wanting to know where you'll end up (not to mention where you are), certain at least though, that you're in a blissful bubble where "crazy" is fine and being normal is just not… normal.

Packed with references to our modern technical word - a huge metal aerial that gives Scott and his wife, Continence "brain cancer", TVs a-plenty, alien-shaped slippers, fast cars, and single mum "Tum" thrown in for good measure - Jim Giraffe systematically "urinates into the coal-effect fire" of modern suburbia, turning it on it's head.

Scott can transform his "high-tech armchair" into a "high-tech birthing bed" and back again, but his neglected wife spends long hours maniacally polishing the sideboard, dreaming of a black stallion. What's more, he can't abide the smell of "nature" that pervades the air from Jim's "Treetops breath".

Taking this novel line by line, page by page, I was carried along by its hilarity and energy. At the end, it will cast you back to the real world with a bump - that's if, after reading it, you really want to go back.

Caroline Gilbert

Jim Giraffe was published in paperback in February 2004.