Imagine that avant-garde minimalist Samuel Beckett and British experimentalist Jeanette Winterson had a baby, which was then raised by detective novelist Raymond Chandler and space-campy bombshell Barbarella.

This must be how author Kira Henehan and her debut novel, "Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles," got here. The bizarrely funny take on the detective novel is this year's winner of Milkweed's National Prize for Fiction.

Now is the part of the review where the reviewer describes the plot. Ummm ...

Narrator Finley (who may or may not be Russian, or human) is an "Investigator" who has been given an "Assignment." Finley has no memory of her past; she woke up one day in the care of Binelli, a leader who doles out Assignments to Finley and two other Investigators, Murphy and The Lamb. What kind of Investigator is Finley? We don't know, but she takes the job very seriously. What is the objective of her Assignment? It's something about puppets. We know she has a sidekick, a snake named Lavendar that she carries in a satchel. We do not know what kind of snake it is.

This is not a novel for those who need traditional plot elements.

Elements are there, but it's as if Henehan has written the math of a plot -- plot as algebraic equation, not story. There is conflict. (Finley is jealous of The Lamb and hates puppets.) There is desire. (Finley is attracted to several people, and becomes increasingly curious about her own identity.) There is mystery. (Where is Binelli's missing twin, with whom he used to make shoes?) There is crisis. (The puppets!) Everything appears in the right order and adds up, though surreally.

Plot is the short skirt wrapped tightly around the book's "real legs": the wacky voice of Finley. It's similar to Ignatius Reilly in "Confederacy of Dunces" in comic syntax, but more earnest and weirdly alien in tone. When hungry, Finley is wooed by the smell of "the cured meats" and "the shrimps." When disappointed, she feels "slightly ill all through my thinking and feeling apparati." When something amazes her, it is "boggling to the mind. Not goggling. Though if one considered, logically, it was goggling as well, at least about the eyes."

The voice makes for an intellectually engaging read about a character we never know much about. But we know enough. Henehan delivers a mimic, a neurotic and a lovable curmudgeon whose bizarre observations and inferences -- gathered in the name of detective work -- reveal a character fumbling around for answers in a world that makes little sense.

Finley may not be of any world we know, but she is an awkward seeker of Self, which is enough to make her hilariously, empathetically human.

Stephanie Wilbur Ash co-writes and co-hosts PowderKeg Live! and is an adjunct instructor at St. Cloud State University.