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The stone gods of prize-winning British novelist Jeanette Winterson's title are the tall monoliths of Easter Island, but there is nothing monolithic in this dynamic and brilliant work of experimental fiction.

Even devoted fans of the gifted Brit will find themselves constantly surprised and elated by the story's progress, which sometimes in this novel means moving forward by going backward. First-time readers will find, if they stay in the car on this wild ride, a new and amazing fiction experience.

The story opens on a green theme as 30-year-old Billie Crusoe finds it necessary to abandon an Earth nearly depleted of the ability to nourish human civilization and take flight on an expedition to a beautiful and strange new, blue planet that human beings will begin to colonize once they rid it of some troublesome species of fauna. Old Earth has become a corporate-run mess, and Billie, along with a small crew and a humanoid female-tending robot named Spike, wants to found a new way of life.

The old way doesn't make much sense to Billie. It drives her mad, she tells Spike the robot. "We make plans. We try to control, but the whole thing is random ... ." Spike doesn't quite agree.

"This is a quantum universe," the robot says, explaining life in terms of the most up-to-date physics we know, "neither random nor determined. It is potential at every second. All you can do is intervene ... ."

The rest of the novel seems to prove Spike's point. Billie falls in love with her. And while preparing to rid the new blue planet of the troublesome fauna, the new settlers apparently destroy themselves.

Except that Billie finds she's been propelled back to old Earth's Easter Island where she's become a he, the time is the late 18th century, and the island is rife with tribal rivalries. And when death ultimately descends toward Billy, we're propelled forward once again, to a corporate-run London, after a Third World War, in which the Billie figure, who's working with the robot Spike, finds the manuscript of this novel while riding the Underground.

You may have decided by now that this isn't a book for you – but if it is, you are in for some of the loveliest passages in recent fiction.

What is human? What is love? This extraordinary novel dramatizes such questions in brilliant set pieces that dazzle the mind of even an old science-fiction hound such as yours truly. Who carves idols and unchanging stone statues to gods who have faded away? Not Jeanette Winterson.

NPR commentator Alan Cheuse's next novel, To Catch the Lightning, will be published in October.

Jeanette Winterson

(Harcourt; $24)

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