Kobo Abe refuses to write a conventional novel. He gives us a series of "notebooks" (and epilogue); within the "notebooks" are charts, banks of information, and clues. The fictional structure is a labyrinth, a "secret rendezvous" of science and poetry….

[In Secret Rendezvous, Abe is] giving us a violent and night-marish work. He deliberately mingles fear and pleasure to force us toward a philosophical position…. The novel outmaneuvers us;… it is full of deceptions, conceits, and reflections—and it suggests that "reality itself"—that is, the world outside of the fiction-world is ultimately inexplicable.

There is another turn—another part of the labyrinth…. Abe suggests that only by accepting an underlying pattern to existence, can we conclude (or even begin) our earthly endeavors. He writes a testament, a document of faith, even when he seems to mock belief in all solutions. The "secret rendezvous" is, in one way...