Reviews tagging 'Lesbophobia'

Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem

1 review

shewantsthediction's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I read this because Youtube randomly decided to recommend me a video of Adam Savage's top 5 favorite sci-fi books. I saw the audio was available and ended up starting and finishing within a single day. The narrator is spectacular and does different voices that bring something to each character, and the writing compelled me to keep going in order to understand this strange world full of grief, household deer, Archbuilders, and disagreeable humans. I loved the protagonist, Pella, who sees through so much of the adults' bullshit but is also quite fickle herself.

This book is strange, but interesting and thought-provoking. My one complaint is that I don't quite understand everything and still have a lot of questions, but that kind of makes it better (regardless of whether or not the author actually had the answers). The sexually-charged scene between Ephraim and Pella and her conversation with Neil towards the end were some of my favorites.

Pella rose to this occasion. She saw, as Kaitlyn couldn't, that it was useless to try to inspire Raymond and David to certain feelings about the life of the family, about their own dawning lives. As useless as trying to inspire those feelings in dogs. Whether they would grow into such feelings or not, they were numb to them now. And though she was less clear on this, she thought Clement was half-numb to them too. They issued from Kaitlyn, and Pella was their only sure receptor. 

You shouldn't talk to someone like they were a baby when the subject was brain tumors, Pella thought. If you thought they were still a baby, you shouldn't discuss brain tumors. And if you didn't think they were still a baby, you shouldn't talk that way. But Pella didn't know how to tell Dr. Flinch to stop, or on which grounds. 

Men want problems to be theirs alone, Pella thought. The doctor seemed to want pity, as though this young mother's illness was difficult for doctors, in a way the family couldn't understand. The same way Clement wanted the election to be his private loss, when it belonged to all of them. 

"You really think it's that simple, don't you, Marsh? Read about a place then go blundering in. The map and the territory are the same."

"Well, not in one regard. You and your high-handed warnings weren't on the map to this place."

"I'm not the only thing... trust me."

The household deer had come out of hiding, and were running insanely everywhere. Pella ignored them. She didn't feel any urge to be among them, didn't feel the sleepy curiosity calling her, didn't miss feeling it. That part of her was gone.

"Your mother."

"She's dead."

"So you too are concerned with the superiority of your lost ancestors," said Hiding Neil. "Hence your receptivity to Ephraim Nugent's valuation of the departed Archbuilders."

"Kaitlyn isn't my ancestor," said Pella, "she's my mother."

"Yet you speak of her as legendary. Like my departed forecousins," said Hiding Neil. "And Clement Marsh, like we who remain, is correspondingly diminished. We tiptoe in the corridors of their reputation."

"So basically you agree with Ephraim that you're a bunch of chumps."

"Possibly?" said Neil, tilting its head humorously. "But perhaps those departed only seem greater to us because they are gone."

"You never met Kaitlyn," said Pella quickly, though not before she felt a sting of doubt. Was she unfair to Archbuilders, to Clement?

"I'm sorry to say, no," said Hiding Neil, as though it might have been a real possibility.

They sat in silence until the Archbuilder said, "Why are you so angry at your father?"

"Because he's like you," she said, before she could think. Hot tears began to cover her face. 

"I do not understand."

"You couldn't." She didn't herself. What did she mean? Clement and Hiding Neil both helpless? Both sad? Both good? 

"Perhaps there is another reason," suggested the Archbuilder.

"Yes," said Pella, "because he lived. And Kaitlyn died."

"Ah," said Hiding Neil, after thinking for awhile. "The elegance of the explanation is that it encompasses also why you are so angry at yourself."

The two of them fell silent as darkness closed over the valley and the farm below.
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