Book Review Illustration in The Washington Post for Michael Clune’s ‘Pan.’

Pan is funny, insightful and a little unhinged.

Michael Clune’s debut novel perfectly captures adolescence with the story of a teenager who’s convinced his panic attacks are caused by a Greek god.

Nick comes to believe that his panic attacks are not merely medical events but rather instances when he is being possessed by the spirit of the Greek god Pan. This rather baroque conceit is not so much a matter of plot — whether he is or isn’t ultimately seems beside the point — but it thoroughly destabilizes any attempt to read “Pan” through a modish lens of mental health or disability. “Because a panic attack doesn’t feel like a panic attack,” Nick observes at one point. “It feels like insight.”