John Wray is hard to pin down

In “The Lost Time Accidents,” John Wray combines literary fiction and far-out scientific theory for a narrative of a lovelorn exile from time. The book sounds a little like Kurt Vonnegut and nothing like John Wray. Which is sort of a problem.

These days, writers have brands. Nicholas Sparks pens love stories. Elena Ferrante is a pseudonymous chronicler of modern Italian life. David Mitchell writes smart fiction with a fantastic twist. But Wray is all over the place.

It’s not that he’s not acclaimed: Wray is a recipient of the prestigious Whiting Writers Award, has been a Guggenheim fellow, and was named one of Granta’s best young American novelists.

Yet he’s hard to pin down, which makes developing a following difficult. Here’s a quick tour through his previous books:

Austrian-born Wray set his debut novel, “The Right Hand of Sleep” (2001), where he was born. It’s the 1930s, and after a two-decade absence in the Ukraine, a man returns to his town in Austria. What awaits him is entanglement in a love triangle and, of course, the terrible lead-up to WWII.

Decades earlier and an ocean away, “Canaan’s Tongue” (2005) is set on the Mississippi River circa 1850. A young man named Virgil falls in with a preacher who is actually the leader of a gang of thugs. Think Cormac McCarthy meets Flannery O’Connor in a tale rich with dialect, based partly on a famed outlaw who crossed paths with Mark Twain.

In 2009’s “Lowboy,” Wray shifted yet again, this time to contemporary New York. The bifurcated tale is told by a schizophrenic teen riding the subways, convinced he must save the world, and the mother and police officer who are trying to find him. Sometimes, it’s hard to figure out where the narrative thread lies.

And that’s not unlike Wray’s literary career. His work, like his latest protagonist, is unstuck in time. What to expect of his next book? Something not much like his last.

carolyn.kellogg@latimes.com