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'One of our most inventive, stylish and sensuous writers... Girl in Landscape may well be the freshest American novel published so far this year.' Entertainment Weekly
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Girl in Landscape finds Jonathan Lethem once again twisting forms and literary conventions to create a dazzling, completely unconventional tale that manages to move and amaze the reader at the same time.
In his new novel, Lethem blends elements as diverse as John Ford's classic Western "The Searchers" and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in an utterly unique way. The heroine is fourteen-year-old Pella Marsh, whose mother dies just before her family flees a post-apocalyptic Brooklyn for the frontier of a recently discovered planet. Hating her ineffectual father, and troubled by a powerful attraction to a virile but dangerous loner who holds sway over the little colony, Pella sets out on a course of discovery that will have tragic and irrevocable consequences for the humans in the community and the ancient inhabitants, known only as archbuilders.
Girl in Landscape is a daring exploration of the violent nature of sexual awakening, a meditation on language and perception, and an homage to the great American tradition of the Western.
In his new novel, Lethem blends elements as diverse as John Ford's classic Western "The Searchers" and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in an utterly unique way. The heroine is fourteen-year-old Pella Marsh, whose mother dies just before her family flees a post-apocalyptic Brooklyn for the frontier of a recently discovered planet. Hating her ineffectual father, and troubled by a powerful attraction to a virile but dangerous loner who holds sway over the little colony, Pella sets out on a course of discovery that will have tragic and irrevocable consequences for the humans in the community and the ancient inhabitants, known only as archbuilders.
Girl in Landscape is a daring exploration of the violent nature of sexual awakening, a meditation on language and perception, and an homage to the great American tradition of the Western.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Joyrneman or author ?,
This review is from: Girl in Landscape (Paperback)
The second Lethem book that I have read and in some ways it has made me rethink how much I liked the first (GwOM). Again this is a "genre-bending" (This phrase seems to be used in every review I have seen) book, this time western-SF rather that detective-SF. Western-SF has a much larger heritage that detective-SF as huge amouts of early SF were really just westerns in space. You know the sort of thing, a group of collonists (pilgrims) set out in their spaceships (waggons) to found a new life on a new world (in the new world). This is a bit different in that for all of it being set against a somewhat confusing SF-Western backdrop it is really a book about sexual awakening, coming of age and the perversions of man. Strangely the thrust of the book is lurking under the surface and does not really ever shine. You get the fealing that the author has tried too hard to fit too many things into one short book. The final chapters seem particularly rushed, as if Lethem suddenly realised that the book was getting a bit long for a slim paperback. It is almost like a child who gets so absorbed in their english homework that they start writing something good, only to realise that they have already done their 500 words and cut the end of a good tale off in a fit of laziness. The fact that Lethem (in these books) seems to want to show off his skill, at mixing and changing styles, at painting diverse characters, at rendering believable and solid worlds (all of which he does very well) makes me wonder if these books are not simply "journeyman" pieces, simply designed to show off his skill rather than to effect the reader. They are wonderfully crafted pieces (aside from the ending of GiL) and I am left wanting to read his other books, but I wonder if I will ever find substance beneth the fine glaze that his words form
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling coming of age story,
By A Customer
This review is from: Girl in Landscape (Hardcover)
Pella and her family, leave behind an underground earth, their fathers political defeat, and their mother's unexpected death for the planet of the archbuilders. The great civilization built by the archbuilders is left in ruins, and the currenct archbuilders are deemed poor copies of their once great ancestors by the immigrants. In a dusty frontier "town" with a few other families, archbuilders, and the unspoken leader, Effram, Pella finds herself a political pawn. First to her father as he decides she and her brothers will not take the medication to protect them from the archbuilders virus. Then to Effram who is trying to undermine Pella's fathers' place in the town as a leader, and kill the remaining archbuilders. The adults fear and prejudice toward the archbuilders prevent them from understanding the archbuilders, and leads to violence in the town. These actions rip the town apart and damage the fragile community. Finally Pella, her family broken by the move, and tired of watching the destruction of the town by Efframs' anger at the remaining archbuilders, begins to fight for justice. For herself and the others. Pella's transformation by the events in the town and the archbuilders virus, and Efframs anger at the current archbuilders and obsession with their ancestors make for two compelling characters. Tension, anger, voyeriusm, and grief color this story making it wonderful and at times suspenseful read.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lethem's Roots,
By Vittorio Caffè (Rome, Italy) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Girl in Landscape (Paperback)
I guess the other reviewer was not very sensitive, or was blinded by the usual prejudice against SF. I do not want to waste your time defending SF and its dignity as a literary territory. Read Dick, read Disch, read Delany, read the early Ballard, and then judge, if you please. But saying that SF is not Lethem's favorite playground obviously means you don't know much/anything about Lethem. He's a brilliant, gifted, and highly original SF writer who turned mainstream when he wrote Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude. But he never forgot his roots. There's a hommage to Philip K. Dick even in the Fortress (which, being based on superheroes among many other things, is partly SF too). As for Girl, it's a great, moving, disquieting vision of America, projected on a faraway planet whose landscape has been cut and pasted from a disquieting masterpiece of US western mindscape, The Searchers. A book about families, children, multicultural relationships, thwarted ambition and crippled love, about loss and mothers, and motherless children. A great book.
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