J. Robert LennonCritiques

There's something great about reading a novel by an author you trust, isn't there? This book is by J. Robert Lennon, so I started off thinking that I was going to enjoy a wild ride that would surprise me a few times, and it turned out I was right. Jane is a mother in her mid-thirties, married and working as administrative assistance at the same college her father teaches at, which lets her keep an eye on him. She's worked hard to build this ordinary existence, and then a single email from her twin sister throws it all into the air. It all has to do with her mother, who disappeared decades ago and had not really been around much when Jane was a child and she and her sister developed [Harriet the Spy]-level skills to try to figure out what was going on with her. Moving back and forth from her childhood to her teen years to Jane's present day, the story is both a thriller with a lot going on and a nuanced look at the relationships between mothers and daughters. It looks like this is the first of a planned series and I will be reading every single one of them.

George Saunders meet Tim Burton. Bakemono, quantum entanglement, meatloaf brownie. Probability wells and the Dead Tower. Cylvia charging in the light before being born in your purse. We think we know what happened but we’re not entirely clear.

Lila and Jane are twin sisters who have a very challenging childhood, mostly because of emotional neglect from their parents. And then their mother disappeared completely out of their lives.. The sisters drift away from each other as they reach adulthood until one day Lila contacts Jane out of the blue via a bygone secret code they used as children. Lila says she knows where their mother is and wants Jane to join her in finding her even though it means disrupting her carefully planned and dull life. Jane agrees and then the cat and mouse action begins and doesn't stop. This was an interesting story, however it did not keep me on the seat of my chair like I thought it would. The narrator was good. I would give this a 3 star rating.
Thank you to Net Galley and Hachette Audio, Mulholland Books for a chance to read/listen the an ARC version of this story.

Short stories again, although the subtitle of the book is "100 Anecdotes." Each of the anecdotes/stories is in the first person, and usually related from a great distance, so they feel very mythic, and each is at most a few pages long. In the intro, we are told that the narrator is 47 years old, and lives in a farmhouse near a college town in rural New York, and, "what he enjoys is being alone, telling himself stories," stories which are "ephemeral," and "protean." The stories are presented in thematic sections, and I thought I'd quote from one story from each thematic section (in some cases, the quote will in fact be the whole story):

Town and Country
"For more than a century the main street in our town was named after a founding father of our state, a man who in a recent revisionist essay was revealed to have been a corrupt, bigoted philanderer who beat his children and disliked dogs. After a string of protests disrupted rush hour traffic, our mayor took down the street signs and promised to rename the street. But loyalists protested the removal and the signs were restored. Further protests again eliminated the signs, and the battle has moved to the courts. Meanwhile, our town's main street has no name at all, confusing visitors, complicating deliveries, and making us the butt of vicious jollity from other, less volatile neighboring towns."

Mystery and Confusion
"Owing to the inefficiency of our plumbing, I am obliged not to wash the dishes while my wife is having a shower. And because we have only one telephone line, I am unable to make calls while my wife is corresponding via e-mail. Therefore, today when my wife was in the shower, I felt that I could not use the phone."

Lies and Blame
"A tree that grows on the property line between our land and our neighbor's land for years served as a playground for the children of both families and was happily considered a share asset, to be maintained and enjoyed by all. But recently the tree was uprooted during a storm, and crushed a passing car. The resulting law suit has led to a property dispute, a flood of certified letters, and the complete dissolution of our friendship."

Work and Money
"In the pocket of a pair of long-forgotten pants I was preparing for donation to Goodwill, I found a ten dollar bill. This pleased me until I realized that the bill was worth less than when I put it into my pocket many years ago. As a gift to my future self, and in a bet against inflation, I added a second ten dollar bill to the pocket and replaced the pants in the back of the closet."

Parents and Children
"When my wife was pregnant with each of our children, I imagined their future appearance and demeanor. It was young men that I imagined, but my wife gave birth to daughters. Today, when I see my grown daughters, I often have the strong but incorrect impression that I have someone I would like them to meet, and realize that it is the imaginary men I thought they might become to whom I want to introduce them, and with whom I believe they would really hit it off."

Artists and Professors
"Our friend, a sculptor, has told us that sculpture cannot be taught; rather it can only be experienced. Similarly, another friend, who is a writer, told us that it is impossible to teach anyone to write; the writer must learn by doing. Presented with the comments of the other, each insisted that only he himself was correct, the writer stating that sculpture was an elitist and wholly artificial endeavor, whose existence depended solely on its institutional perpetuation, and the sculptor insisting that writing, far from being a true art, was a purely academic exercise. Each man heads the department dedicated to his specific field at our local university."

Doom and Madness
"When a local apartment fire claimed the lives of 37 people, I was shocked and appalled. Later, when several residents were discovered to have been out of town, and the number of dead was revised to 29, I was somewhat relieved. At the same time, I felt faintly betrayed and disappointed, and wished that my grief and sympathy for the eight additional victims and their families had not gone to waste."

These samples should give you a taste of whether this would be something you would be interested in reading.

3 stars

This was a very interesting collection of microstories/anecdotes about situations and happenings around a fictitious town. As with most collections, some were great, some were good and some not so good. They were quirky, with sometimes an odd twilight zone twist, or just an abrupt end, like you would have in a random anecdote. I liked the book pretty well. My only ding, was that perhaps there were too many stories. Hard to keep them all straight. To give you a taste, here's the introductory story to one of the sections, called Doom and Madness.

When a local apartment fire claimed the lives of 37 people, I was shocked and appalled. Later, when several residents were discovered to have been out of town, and the number of dead was revised to 29, I was somewhat relieved. At the same time, I felt faintly betrayed and disappointed, and wished that my grief and sympathy for the 8 additional victims and their families had not gone to waste½

A book that wants to be Murakami, but isn't. Characters lack depth, everything feels very blasé. There are also similarities with the fantastic video game Kentucky Route Zero in its surrealist portrayal of a hollowed-out working class community, but ultimately these, as with everything else in the book, are only pale immitations of much better works.

I decided to read this book based on the back cover blurb which talked about the camaraderie of running teams in New York City. Being a part of this scene for decades I thought this book would be perfect for me. But it seems I didn't read the blurb carefully enough because it turns out the book focused on just one running club. A club for gays and lesbians. And while there were some good moments about races I ran; for the most part this was a novel about the gay lifestyle and all the drama that surrounds it. And believe me, in this novel there were lots of drama queens and consequently, more drama that I could handle.

The central storyline? metaphor? here is pretty clear, starting early on, and for that reason I needed either more or less. More surrealism, or more integration of the other characters and symbols. More reveals, or just less precious ones. I don't know, I liked the pacing and the tone, but I'm not sold. It's possible in a week I'll still be thinking about it, and it's possible I'll have forgotten it completely.

The opening pages of this book are narrated from the pov of a ghostly "observer" watching over a house in the middle of the woods in upstate New York. It is the middle of the night and suddenly chaos ensues: a man, woman and small child are grabbing a few things and rushing out the door to their car. They don't make it to the end of the driveway before the man and woman are shot and killed. The child escapes. There passes a period of 12 years as the Observer notes the decay of the house, and its occasional occupation by vagrants and teenage lovers.

Then the house is purchased and renovated and a new family moves in. Karl is a sculptor. His wife Eleanor is a successful writer of "chick-lit"--she "recognizes the essential frivolity of her work, but insists on approaching it with intelligence and a dedication to craft." Their daughter Irina is 12. They have moved to this rural setting from Brooklyn in an attempt to save their marriage which has suffered from Karl's multiple infidelities. Most of the rest of the book is told from the alternating viewpoints of one of these three main characters, with occasional interjections from the Observer, who functions as a kind of Greek chorus.

The focus is on family dynamics, but there is also an underlying crime/thriller element. The double homicide has never been solved. Unbeknownst to her parents, Irina becomes obsessed with the crime and participates in an online forum discussing the crime, Cyber Sleuths. And unknown to Irina, her mother Eleanor is also participating on the forum. Irina is focused on finding out what happened to the child who escaped, and when she meets a teenage girl in town, she convinces herself that this is that child. Through it all the ghostly observer "observes" and comments, and we see things from multiple points of view, and from a bird's eye view.

While it's mostly a quiet novel of a family disintegrating, it is also a psychological thriller, and the last third of the novel, as the crimes from the past begin to invade the present, were as exciting as any thriller I've read recently. It's extremely well-paced and I was compelled to keep turning the pages through-out. Amazon describes it as an "intelligent literary psychological thriller," and one reviewer compared it to a Coen Brothers film. I agree.

3 1/2 stars

First line: "It is a few minutes past one in the morning when the front door slams shut."

Last line: "She chants faster and faster, until she can't take it anymore, and then she laughs until she can barely breathe."½

This book is a puzzle. I couldn't tell you what it means to convey, but somehow I liked it.

The unnamed narrator (a young woman it seems) has arrived in the subdivision seemingly to start a new life. She takes a room at the guest house run by two older women, Clara and the Judge. However, both women are named Clara and both are retired judges, so our narrator is never sure which woman is Clara and which the Judge.

Besides constantly urging the narrator to work on the puzzle (which is constantly changing), Clara and the Judge give her a hand-drawn map of the subdivision as well as leads on how to find permanent housing and a job. The road to the city is blocked off. On her first day exploring, the narrator purchases an Alexa-like device. named Cylvia, which provides advice and assistance and which is constantly mutating. She also comes across the bakemono, a sort of shape-shifting demon who will be a threatening feature through-out. Cylvia helpfully warns her, "You must not fornicate with the bakemono."

The NYT described this as an "enigma packed with miniature mysteries." I don't usually like novels that are dream-like and feature seemingly pointless journeys, but I did quite like this one, and I'm still trying to figure out why.

3 1/2 stars½

This is a really good book. Reminded me of Murakami, also reminded me of a really good young adult book called Measle and the Wrathmonk. Has a little of a Charlie Kaufmann feel - psychological mystery, fun characters, weird unexpected wrinkles in reality. The leaps it takes are just far enough to keep you engaged in following the thread, and makes for a compelling read. I got through it in two days, this was a library thing recommendation and man that algorithm nailed it.

Interesting, but with loose ends and not enough info as to WHY the killings. Nebulous money and drugs, but nothing concrete. Even the ever-present "observer" has nothing to say on this topic. And since there is no police involved we get nothing from there either. We're left with one uber thug (Joe) and his cowed minion (Louis) doing the dirty work then and now, but for such little reward that I don't get it. Especially when Joe breaks from whatever boss was supposed to be in charge and goes after what he thinks is his - presumably a weed growing operation and associated piles of cash. Neither of which seem to exist. Louis gets a bit of his own back in the end and seems to have been punished enough.

It's weird and the best character by far is Irina. She's funny. Too grown up. Observant. Self-contained. Talented. She was painfully aware of her in-between state - not quite a child, but not a teenager either. Sometimes she acted way over her age and sometimes quite appropriately and she knew that, too. She knew how awful her parents were and how they treated her like an adult, not even attempting to shield her from their bullshit. Sometimes she sees through it for what it is, and sometimes she’s still baffled.

I liked her, but her father was a self-deluded asshole who had a case of toxic masculinity worse than I've seen in a while. He's a womanizing jackass who diminishes his wife's far more lucrative talent because he just can't imagine a woman having anything to say that has any bearing on his life and who has time to READ A WHOLE BOOK? OMG I was super happy that he did something right in the end and if the story had gone on, I wouldn't have to deal with him anymore.

Eleanor was less well-drawn than Irina was and even though she ended up finishing her novel, it wasn’t the departure the dust jacket makes it out to be. She and Irina dive into the Cyber Sleuth website and adopt anonymous personas in order to try to find out the details about the people killed in their house before they owned it. Neither comes out to the other as to their participation and I was annoyed because the website was just used as a goad for the bad guys to come after them, something that could have been done another way.

Overall it’s interesting and worth reading although experienced thriller readers will be annoyed that many threads just dangle and it seems like the book’s gimmick - the observer - was a stronger piece of the plot than the actual events even though it had no bearing on those.½

What a weird book and not even translated this time! I have my suspicions about what it all means that I won't spoil here. The details have almost a dreamlike, unconscious quality. It's like if you mashup David Lynch projects with Alice in Wonderland. I will say, it looks like my second hand copy here was thrown across a room by the previous reader, if that tells you anything? Didn't hate it, didn't love it.
*Book #124/304 I have read of the shortlisted Morning News Tournament of Books competitors

This is a weird one. Set in a place called the subdivision, cut off from the city for unknown reasons, a woman arrives at a bed and breakfast sort of place with no idea of who she is, but she plans to find a place to live and a job. There's a puzzle, and an odd smart device and a little boy and a badger-monster-guy and some other weird people. For much of the book, it feels random and unstructured, like an extended dream sequence in an experimental film. And then all the pieces fall into place, sort of.

I dragged myself through this book but ended up delighted, but also not entirely sure what to think of it all. My least favorite kind of book is the ones were outside forces make random changes (not big on books that rely on magic or elves or powerful forces) so that the reader never has solid ground underfoot and this felt like that, until the moment when it didn't. I'm looking forward to getting to find out what other people think of this one.

I really like this novel. With its symbolism, mythology, and dream-like surrealism, it feels a little like a cross between Ulysses and the movie Mulholland Drive. This novel has what I love from fiction: lessons that characters learn obliquely and often accidentally, the way all of us in the real world learn lessons, if we manage to learn them at all.

This book has a similar eerie, otherworldly feel as both [book:Census|35068746] and [book:That Time of Year|51243985]. I felt that both of those novels were allegories, thus one I am not so sure--is it an allegory, or is it a novel of an unconscious person/trauma survivor's thoughts and dreams?

I am leaving this at 4 stars for now, but it may go up to 5. I really liked this, but I also feel like I am missing something. I read this for the Tournament of Books, and I am really looking forward to the judgement and discussion there!

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Is the unnamed narrator Anna? I assume she was actually in the car accident that she relives during the storm. Was Mr Lorre the truck driver? Is he trying to take her flowers not because she is his wife, but because he is in better shape after the accident? Or is he similarly injured and he is worried about her? Who was driving her car--is the bakemono character (and her "killing" him) part of her recovery? Is she mad at that person? Was it her husband? Did he die? Is the boy her son? Did she lose a pregnancy in the accident, represented by Cylvia, who she has to let go?

Or, are these characters all dead? Is The City their waking from comas and returning to real life, or is The Subdivision Purgatory, and The City is heaven?

So many questions!!!

2022 TOB—This book, although easy to read, was very very weird. Yet I probably followed the plot satisfactorily. But maybe not. Our unnamed protagonist finds herself in the subdivision where things are very strange. Kudos to the author for having such a vivid imagination. And she can’t leave the subdivision for the city until she resolves something. I have interpreted this as the subdivision being purgatory and the city being heaven. I am curious to see what others think.½

A quirky book. The female protagonist checks into a guest house in the Subdivision run by two women (Clara and the Judge, who seem eerily interchangeable.) She seems adrift, perhaps from the end of a relationship or job, and seeks their recommendations in finding a permanent place to live and a new job. She has purchases Cylvia, an electronic personal assistant, who seems to have deep knowledge about places, people, events of which our main character is unaware. As she wanders around the Subdivision, she meets strange people and phenomenon, and her job is certainly odd too, including her boss and co-worker. I liked it for its strangeness and for the weird puzzle in the guest house.

Enjoyable psychological thriller.

A plane crashes in Montana, and this is the story of those left behind. A young man waiting for his girlfriend at the airport, an old woman awaiting the return of the husband who left decades ago, the couple who witnessed the crash and the mysterious stranger who appears at their door. It's mostly a sad story, as to be expected, dealing with the aftermath of a tragedy. The stories are interesting enough to pull me in and make me want to find out what happens. I like the way the characters were complicated and, for the most part, well drawn.½

Grant Person is a curious character. When we first meet this protagonist, he is leaving his Montana sheep ranching family for somewhere (anywhere?) else. His whole attitude is one of ambivalence. If the train stops he'll get on board. If not, oh well. He'll go back to his parents and brother as if nothing happened. He has no clear direction other than he would head due east towards New York. He ends up in Atlantic City, New Jersey for some time then wanders home again when he learns his mother has died.
When Grant returns, he is the exact opposite. He comes home to a sheep ranch barely surviving. After his mother's death, his father runs away. His brother with dreams of being an artist has one foot out the door himself. By himself, Grant becomes singular in his focus to save the farm. It's a stark story with barely any color or light.

This book is good book if you like mystery and drama. It talks about how a couple was murdered and were kept a mystery till they found by the river. It is very descriptive.

Lennon gives us a story told in the first person by his unreliable narrator, Eric Loesch, who speaks in a stilted, almost nineteenth century, voice, without contractions, without warmth, without affect. Eric is a cold fish carrying around burdens we only gradually learn about.
This is a book driven by its slowly developing, dark, but ultimately interesting plot.
It's one of those novels that, at the end, I'm glad I finished. I wasn't put off by its clunky phrasing or its few undeveloped plot elements. I was put off by its darkness, by scenes of Eric's physical and mental abuse as a child, and of his involvement in wartime torture, This is not a book to read at bedtime.
We are not sure which parts of the story happen in Eric's life and which are in his head. The book is open to many interpretations.

The book had an excellent start, a slow middle. As I neared the end, I was worried that it wouldn't tie up well, but it tied up almost everything fine. I would highly recommend giving this one a shot, though it's definitely not for everyone.

An unusual literary thriller. As a family flee from their home, the mother and father are murdered in front of their child who manages to escape and survive, disappearing into the mists of time. The house is left vacant for twelve years, going to rack and ruin giving it a cursed reputation, until a new family move in. Unfortunately, instead of being a new start, the past comes back to haunt them.

I usually like literary style mysteries but this one didn’t really do it for me. I didn’t like the way it was written. I struggled with it on the whole, I thought it was quite slow and drawn out. It’s written in the present tense which doesn’t always gel with me, either. Although I don’t normally have to like the characters to enjoy a book, the ones in Broken River were mostly unsympathetic and unappealing. There’s also an abstract sort of character known as ‘The Observer’ which floats around doing just that - observing. I understood its point, like a fly on the wall, but found this a little odd and distracting. The story is described as part gothic horror but I didn’t find it scary or creepy at all.

I think it’s a very cleverly and quirkily written novel. It’s full of philosophical thoughts and psychology, so a little deep! It’s not a bad book, quite original, but just not my cup of tea.½