Writing a novel set amid a particular subculture is no easy task; writing about people squatting in abandoned buildings and living on the margins of society is especially challenging. There have been some memorable entries in this canon in recent years – Cari Luna’s “The Revolution of Every Day” and Justin Taylor’s “The Gospel of Anarchy” both come to mind – but there’s a reason we see more novels set in workplaces or in schools than those situated in countercultural squats.

Saco resident Douglas W. Milliken’s new novel, “Enclosure Architect,” is a compelling addition to the literary world set in this milieu. (Milliken has also served as a judge for the Maine Literary Awards and been a visiting artist at the Maine College of Art, among other accomplishments.) And in telling this story about a community of artists and students living off the grid, he also evokes a world where existing institutions are crumbling and a sense of perpetual danger hangs overhead.

“Enclosure Architect,” by Douglas W. Milliken. West Virginia University Press. 246 pgs.

Much of this novel follows an unnamed narrator looking back at her foray into what she dubs “the crust-punk squatter lifestyle” and the other artists that she encounters there. While most of the book focuses on the narrator and her compatriots’ time in art school, she also shares that, later in life, she’s opted for a more stable way of life.

The city where the narrator and her friends live goes unnamed, though one of the narrator’s peers is named Denver, a decision that makes for a few jarring moments throughout when the reader needs to remember that “Denver,” in this case, refers to a man and not a city. And the narrator’s descriptions of her peers are also precisely drawn, with one character described as follows: “She was blonde and slight and looked like an office girl from a Capra movie but worked almost exclusively documenting the city’s BDSM culture.”

That ambiguity as to this book’s location isn’t the only way in which everything feels slightly liminal. At one point, the narrator makes a reference to her group moving into a house – but she also shares the fact that the neighborhood had recently been “under attack.” Throughout the book, the narrator makes allusions to bombings that target local shops and the university where she and her friends are studying.

Whether you look at this as a cautionary tale of the near future or an alternate present day, it’s disquieting – both the fact of the bombings themselves and the way that the narrator and her friends have become inured to them. Some of the interactions between the art students feels like the kind of interactions that art students have: heady debates about novels and films, hesitant relationships and subtle betrayals. But Milliken is wise enough to keep the references to acts of destruction paced out enough that the reader feels their impact, even if the characters living in this world are numb to them.

As befits a book where most of the characters are studying art, Milliken also includes several heady conversations about artists, including discussions of the works of the likes of Sol LeWitt, James Turrell and Lawrence Weiner. Visual and conceptual art aren’t the only creative works here; the characters also converse about Steve Erickson’s novel “Zeroville” and the film “Two-Lane Blacktop” – narratively bold works that blend accessibility with bold conceptual risks, much like “Enclosure Architect” itself.

Stylistically, there’s also a lot going on here. Sometimes, the narrator will include lists of very granular details about a specific element of the book. There’s also a sense that our narrator might not be entirely reliable; she says, about a third of the way through, “I guess I lied before.” And in a few cases, Milliken shift gears into a gorgeously poetic mode:

“When we could prowl the abounding vacancy and find, to our amazement and fortune, cases of beer still cold in the defunct coolers of blasted bodegas, backyard gardens riotous with fruit and bloom forgotten when the households fled for cover, pints of Old Granddad in deserted sock drawers no one had opened in weeks.”

Besides the sense of dangers small and large, Milliken also adds a profound sense of regret that runs throughout the book. The narrator at one point cites “the constant and acute reminders that I profoundly miss my friends and the world we together created,” and there’s an image of her years later, in ill health, returning to the spaces she frequented at that point in her life. There’s a heady appeal to “Enclosure Architect,” but Milliken also never neglects this novel’s beating heart.

New York City resident Tobias Carroll is the author of four books, most recently the novel “Ex-Members.” He has reviewed books for The New York Times, Bookforum, the Star Tribune and elsewhere.