LOS ANGELES — Mark Z. Danielewski’s readers might try to find meaning in his choice of hot chamomile tea on an unusually warm fall day. That’s what they do. They would wonder whether the tea’s golden hue reflects the eye colour of characters in “Only Revolutions,” his multilayered National Book Award-nominated novel — a gold that careful readers can’t miss shimmering through the book in other descriptions and, periodically, the printed text.The price of the tea — $3.95, without tip or tax — could hint at some numerological clue. “Only Revolutions” is thick with them. Or Danielewski could have simply ordered herbal tea because he already had consumed enough caffeine that morning.

The 40-year-old author’s dense, difficult free-verse prose requires active reading. His readers fill online message boards with attempts to suss out subtext of his road tale — a story of two teenage lovers that transcends time, history and linear logic. Danielewski faces four other contenders for the fiction prize, to be awarded Wednesday night in New York.

“Never underestimate your audience,” he tells The Associated Press, between sips of tea. “Unless you really know it, you can disparage it, patronise it, belittle it and limit it. I don’t want to do that.”

Danielewski knows his audience well. They helped write him “Only Revolutions.” And the process of reading the book forces his readers to take control of it like a steering wheel, flipping it upside down and back to read first-person accounts of the same events by the two protagonists, 16-year-old Hailey and Sam. The author deliberately cedes narrative authority to his audience.

“He sort of pushed his way close to the mainstream, but he’s still experimental,” said Manny Chazarria, 23, a self-described fan who works at the independent book store Book Soup in West Hollywood. “He’s completely doing something else. ‘House of Leaves’ is kind of an experimental horror novel, and ‘Only Revolutions’ is a love story.”

The interaction between readers and author in “Only Revolutions” actually began six years ago, when Danielewski first started his novel.

Using Craig’s List and his personal Web site, the author asked fans of his first novel, the equally challenging “House of Leaves,” to submit lists of historic moments from 1863-1963. He included the esoteric product in the margins of “Only Revolutions” to correspond with the first 100 years of Hailey and Sam’s journey.

If that sounds complicated, the inspiration for “Only Revolutions” came quite simply. While living in Paris while he wrote “House of Leaves,” Danielewski ate at soup kitchens to save money on rent. He was moved by a teenage homeless couple he spotted there and others he saw in other cities.

“They had nothing but the love from each other,” he says. “I had no idea how healthy their relationship together was, but they exhibited a great deal of freedom, and exaltation at the way they saw the world. It was breathtaking, moving and enviable.”

The 360-page novel — one its many references to a circle — is more than just about Hailey and Sam. It’s a meditation of history, America, violence and freedom. The book comes with instructions for the reader: With Hailey and Sam’s accounts starting on opposing sides of the book, the publisher, Pantheon, suggests reading eight pages before flipping the book to read the same account seen through Sam’s “Green Eyes with flecks of Gold” and Hailey’s “Gold Eyes with flecks of Green.” The green and yellow bookmarks woven into the book’s spine help readers keep place. Danielewski stresses, however, that there are many ways to read the book.

“People who have the easiest time finding a way are young people who can let go of prejudices of how to read a book and dive in,” Danielewski says.

He provides no guidelines of how the historical events are supposed to interact with the overall narrative, though a careful read will reveal that some correspond to events taking place in the narrative. The slang, the make of Hailey and Sam’s car, and their surroundings morph with the time period as they drift through the story.

An orgy in New Orleans is interrupted when Hailey “sniffs and desnoots: — Ahhh chooooooooooooo!” Everyone gets sick. Hailey and Sam wind up in a hospital. Danielewski says he was playing with the cliche used to describe the consequences of the 1929 Wall Street crash: “Wall Street sneezed, the rest of the world gets pneumonia.”

“Are they shaped by 20s, an allegory for the 20s, or are they the 20s themselves?” Danielewski asks. “When Hailey sneezes, does she really give the rest of world pneumonia?”

All references of the word “us” are capitalised — is he talking about the US? — and “alone” is spelled “allone.”

Danielewski will say little more, preferring that Hailey and Sam’s journey continue through readers. “Where does the narrative end?” he says. “This is just a beginning, opening the narrative up to chat rooms.”