Firstly, let me tell you that Luke Rhineheart did not create this book. Luke Rhineheart does not exist. However, for the sake of reading The Dice Man, you are to assume that he does exist and did write this book. It’s all part of the illusion - you suspend your disbelief before you even open the cover. So I’m not telling you who *actually* wrote it, because it’s simply not important.

The Dice Man is held up by many as one of the key texts in the transgressive genre. It’s playful, frightening, compelling and just plain weird. Rhineheart has no fear in writing a chapter a sentence log which basically says ‘I’m not telling you this bit, and if you thought I would, you’re madder than I am’.

Essentially it is a story of madness, but a destructively liberating madness that makes you want to live the journey through him because you just don’t have the balls to leave your life to fate. Rhineheart finds joy and heartbreak through having his every decision be made through the roll of a dice, and the dice literally becomes his god within a few chapters. Then the dice go far beyond his control as he sets up a Dice center for other dice men and women to join in. It’s like Scientology, only an awful lot cheaper. And with extra sex and lunacy.

It’s a long slog of a read, but that’s the point of it. Anyone’s life is interesting when you take the boring bits out, but the dice didn’t want Rhineheart to do that. And what the dice wants, the dice gets.

Pick it up if you want a roller-coaster of a head trip.

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