It’s likely that someone along the way told philosophy graduate turned novelist Heinz Helle to ‘write what you know’.

His debut novel is anchored in issues of consciousness and the purpose of our existence. Superabundance isn’t so much a story, however, as a neatly formatted train of thought. On that front, Helle’s efforts are laudable. Often funny, occasionally touching, the journey inside the mind of his nameless narrator is undoubtedly immersive.

The issue, though, is that there’s little enough by way of reward. Unlike, say, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, there’s no narrative action that might warrant such deep rumination. And when monotony is put under the microscope, it comes up predictably empty. At times, the story reads more like a diary of an unusually officious child than the kind of considered musings that merit investigation.

In short, Helle is a talent worth watching – but the rigid concept here strangles any possibility of a real triumph.