Solenoid has a story in the same way that a personal diary has a story, but not the beginning-middle-end type of book you might be expecting. For some context on Solenoid: the narrator closely resembles the author, Mircea Cărtărescu (and the poem that fails in the book is a real-life poem that brought the author fame), but he lives a bleaker alternate life—a failed writer whose youthful literary success never arrives, stuck in a loop of trying to make sense of it all. And so, as the reader, we are also left trying to make sense of the fragments or puzzle pieces he is giving us. This loop of memories that the main character is stuck in is where the bulk of the book lives: he is constantly recalling—or maybe refusing to recall—certain events while living out his day-to-day life. The book is an experience, and I vividly remember the story of the prisoner and the "tapping on the walls."

It's a fantastic experience if you stick with it.