Don't Miss

• NYRB Classics: Save 30%
• Paperback Favorites
  for Book Groups
• Springer Math Sale!
• Subscribe to Indiespensable

More at Powell's

• Featured Signed Editions
• Rare and Collectible Books
• eBooks | Audio | DVDs | Blu-ray

---

Original Essays | September 23, 2009

Stops: On Those Things My New Novel Forgot to Be About, Maybe

0 comments By Jonathan Lethem

For me, there's a weird, unfathomable gulf — I almost wrote gulp — between the completion of a novel and its publication. Some days this duration feels interminable, as though the book has... Continue »

---

1. 
   $19.56 Sale Hardcover add to wish list

   Chronic City

   Jonathan Lethem

Report Comment

---

You are reporting a comment on the following title:

---

You are reporting the following comment:

OneMansView, January 30, 2009

Which predominates: overwritten tedium or brilliance? (3.5 *s)

This is a book that is flooded with descriptions, imagery, and contemplation that can, from sentence to sentence, seem odd, difficult, and overwritten and then insightful, lyrical, and poetic. The central character is Sylvie, a thirty-something female, who has returned to Fingerbone, an obscure western town set on a large lake, to care for her two nieces who have lost both their grandmother and mother. The story is told from the standpoint of Ruthie, one of the girls.

A heavy cloud hands over the entire book as death, impermanence, the power of water and the wind, cold weather, forests, mud, deprivation, and the like are constants in this rather gloomy story. It is a formidable environment that Sylvie and Ruthie, largely unsuccessfully, attempt to navigate, including social expectations and illusions. Despite an unspecified life of trouble, there is a strength and resoluteness to Sylvie that resonates.

The plot is minimal. The characters serve as a means for the author to develop her themes. The book is difficult and tedious with digressions interlaced throughout, not to mention getting past the author’s obscure word choices, yet there is brilliance on most every page.

---

Your email address:

---

Reason for report:

---

Are you a robot? We didn't think so. But just to be sure, please type what you see in the following image into the box below.

---

Confirmation:

Are you certain you wish to report this comment?

---

Terms and Conditions

We welcome your comments and ideas, but we ask that you refrain from:

• Obscenity
• Spam
• Illegal content
• Copyrighted material
• Commercial solicitations

By posting your comments you are granting the good people of Powells.com the right (but not the obligation) to make your comments available to others over the Internet, and to copy and distribute your comments via other media, in each case on a royalty free basis. These terms govern the rights and obligations of the person posting comments and Powells.com; there are no intended third party beneficiaries of these terms.

Posted comments are subject to monitoring, editing, and removal at any time. Please see our Terms of Use for our complete terms and conditions.

---

Children's Online Privacy Protection Act

In accordance with The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, you must be at least 13 to submit comments on Powells.com.