A Novel?

"This is an unusual book. It is a kind of 'novel,' as those who first read the proofs noted. In this work the discovery of life as 'vocation' comes about not through deduction but through the evidence of an experience lived according to reason, within the same breadth as Mystery.

[....]

The book can be conceived as an exemplary narrative where spontaneity, loyalty, and seriousness in the consideration of one's own existence was able to ascribe a suggestiveness to something that most people would censure or disdain because of an abstract fear."

Excerpt from "By Way of Introduction" from the series: Is It Possible to Live Like This: An Unusual Approach to Christian Experience.

How is this series of books a novel? What kind of novel is it like? In what ways does one approach a novel differently than one would read a work of theology or a classic of Western spirituality?