The novelist Iain Pears has published his latest novel, Arcadia, as both a book and an app. The book has a series of wildly playful plots that tangle storytelling with time-travel; the app allows you to explore the strands of narrative in any order you like, as well as offering ancillary materials that are not contained in the book.

Steven Poole’s review in last Saturday’s Guardian recommended that readers buy the book, not the app, on the grounds that ‘a printed book is much better than an iPad for reading on the beach (probably the most charitable context in which to consume Arcadia)’. But Poole also found the book to have ‘a curious feeling of weightlessness’; ‘ideas are thrown together without much compelling detail or texture’. Since weightlessness is something we habitually associate with digital texts, I wonder whether Pears is deliberately adopting a style that suits the screen rather than the page.

Meanwhile the app only costs £2.99, but the book is £18.99. So I think I know which I’ll try first…