Reviews

Subdivision by J. Robert Lennon

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jfsheehan95's review

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Subdivision is a genre-defying, surreal, funny, and quietly melancholic novel. it’s the kind of book where I understood the wider picture of the story but had no idea where it was going to take me from one chapter to the next and I had so much fun with it!

the novel follows an unnamed narrator as she arrives in a mysterious town known as the Subdivision. it’s the type of place that seems normal on the surface but pull back the curtain and you’ll suddenly see it’s weird reality. it’s very dreamlike in this way, where you can tell something is slightly off-kilter but you can’t exactly put your finger on what.

something I loved about this book was how it balanced the surreal and the emotional. it’s full of odd moments and absurd humour but there’s also a sense of quiet sadness that runs throughout too. the blend of these two things help push and pull the mysterious plot along and it made for captivating reading.

overall, Subdivision is a wonderfully strange and unique reading experience. it’s the kind of book that doesn’t offer easy answers but invites you to get lost in its dreamlike world. I’d definitely like to explore more of this authors work in the future!

zellreads's review

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3.0

Very, very weird, in an interesting and satisfying way. Most surrealist book seem to start out fairly realistic and then become less and less so throughout. This one started out bizarre and never really stopped feeling this way. The world and characters were intriguing and the plot and symbolism were well executed.

pokebroadam's review

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Honestly one of the best books I’ve ever read. I never had so much anxiety and joy and sadness at one time reading a book before. And once it had finally clicked to me that the narrator is likely dead/in a coma, I knew it was a book I’d have to read again. It beautifully exploded trauma and grief in a really disturbing way

boxghost94's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

sunn_bleach's review

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challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

"Subdivision" would have struck me harder if I hadn't seen this trick pulled in lots of other media. I got that this was a

dying dream

before the halfway point; not a flex on my behalf, simply that the puzzle pieces (hehehe) were all there early on. It's one of those books that simultaneously is a little obvious and a little cryptic, and the cryptic parts (such as the birthday party and the tennis ball) become more annoying than poignant as they seem to be there to confuse our narrator and just be weird. I love surreality, but if you go to great strides to make things have a symbol, they could be more symbolic, especially with how obvious things like the puzzle piece are. It felt disjointed in how "challenging" it wanted to be - and overly precious when it tried to be heartfelt.

Yet I wanted to keep reading because I wanted to see if Lennon stuck the landing - and he did. Parts like

the unnamed narrator being pregnant, the probability well at the house being what the family *could* have had in a happier life, her forgetting her own name due to the head trauma of the accident, and Cylvia being her unborn child who *does* survive the accident

were nice little "aha!" moments toward the end, as well as figuring out who the unnamed boy was supposed to be. The final section is unsubtle, but it works as the narrator comes closer and closer to the City.

The stilted prose was a little frustrating at the start - but I think that's best seen as yet another manifestation of our narrator's peculiar problem. And it makes her interactions with the bakemono all the better.

Content Warnings