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A review by chamblyman
Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem
3.0
Call this a 3 and 1/2 star book.
Jonathan Lethem is a very talented writer and I've more or less enjoyed everything he's done. From absolutely brilliant (Fortress of Solitude, Chronic City), to very clever and stimulating (Motherless Brooklyn, As She Climbed Across the Table), to interesting genre experiments (Girl in Landscape, Gun With Occasional Music, Amnesia Moon), he's progressed by leaps and bounds, and covered much more diverse stylistic territory than most writers ever do.
His prose in Dissident Gardens is as good, if not better than, ever. His characters are fully fleshed, his setting vibrant. If the mid-20th century New York world of commie-pinko-jewish-lefty-hippy-bohemians is of interest to you at all, you will probably highly enjoy this. It paints a wonderful portrait of human interaction over three generations; framed by ideology, and colored in family blood.
It's episodic nature and lack of any big surprises kept it just shy of being a 4 star book for me.
Jonathan Lethem is a very talented writer and I've more or less enjoyed everything he's done. From absolutely brilliant (Fortress of Solitude, Chronic City), to very clever and stimulating (Motherless Brooklyn, As She Climbed Across the Table), to interesting genre experiments (Girl in Landscape, Gun With Occasional Music, Amnesia Moon), he's progressed by leaps and bounds, and covered much more diverse stylistic territory than most writers ever do.
His prose in Dissident Gardens is as good, if not better than, ever. His characters are fully fleshed, his setting vibrant. If the mid-20th century New York world of commie-pinko-jewish-lefty-hippy-bohemians is of interest to you at all, you will probably highly enjoy this. It paints a wonderful portrait of human interaction over three generations; framed by ideology, and colored in family blood.
It's episodic nature and lack of any big surprises kept it just shy of being a 4 star book for me.