Come take a tour of a Paris that never was, but honestly should be. It’s the Paris of absinthe dreams and opium wishes, the Paris of starving artists, unknown writers, and one-of-a-kind tourists. It’s the Paris where anything goes, and nothing is exactly as it seems.

Visit the Cafe Nada, famed for its unusual meetings between authors and editors, while agents are left to languish on the sidewalk, and where the food is as literary as the patrons.

Make a reservation at the Hotel Rien Plus, where reservations are indeed accepted, advance payment taken, but where no one has ever actually stayed.

If that’s not to your taste, you can always stay over at the Hotel Carrington, an unusual little place where you’ll be expected to make a debutante-style appearance at your window before going to bed, for the benefit of the audience in the street.

Hungry again? Eat at the Cafe Conjugal, where spats and arguments between couples are strictly forbidden. To eat here is to declare a temporary, unspoken truce, no matter how angry you are with your mate.

For entertainment, might we suggest L’Ange des Sables, a cinema which only shows movies filmed in the desert? How about La Pudeur Aux Yeux, where the performers actually put -on- clothes in a reverse striptease?

For the daytime, you might consider the Musee des Levres et Livres (The Museum of Lips and Books), where everything has to do with, what else, the juxtaposition of the two themes.

Shop at Tous les Deux: Brasserie et Brassierie, a combination lingerie shop and bistro. Take a ride on the Metro Josephine, or the Metro Marquis de Sade.

Whatever your tastes, the Paris Out of Hand probably has something to suit or offend you. After all, it’s a phantom Paris, a wildly imaginative, impossible city that exists only in our minds, and in this faux guidebook by Karen Elizabeth Gordon, author of the Deluxe Transitive Vampire.

Gordon loves to play with words, and nowhere is it as evident as right here. Every page is filled with words, and they’re all in the right order, as a friend of mine is wont to say. Written in the style of one of the more esoteric guidebooks, it’s easy to believe that this could be real, and on some levels, one hopes that it is all true. If some of the places listed within don’t exist, it’s high time we created them.

Yes, this book will gleefully direct you to sights, entertainment, shopping, hotels, cafes, nightclubs, and transportation, places as unreal and surreal as you can get and still believe in magic. With a thorough key that offers symbols to denote everything from “uncomfortable beds” to “closed during tulip season in Holland” (and let’s not forget “windmills cannot be heard from any room!”), this is the guidebook your mother warned you about.

I confess. I’m in love with the oddity that is Paris Out of Hand. I’ve never encountered a book quite like it, and it occupies a special place in my bemused subconscious. I take this book with me when traveling as a way of soothing the traumas of the mundane world. Description alone can’t do this book justice, nor can it convey a proper sense of the beautiful artwork, maps, signs, symbols, sketches and drawings that are liberally splashed across every page.

Whether you love or hate travelling, this is the guidebook for you. It’s subversive in its creativity, and manipulative in its subtlety. I highly recommend it to fill that extra space on your shelf.