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Interviews | December 1, 2009

Megan: IMG A Meaty Tale: The Powells.com Interview with Julie Powell

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Girl in Landscape

by Jonathan Lethem

Girl in Landscape Cover

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"Girl in Landscape is, really, a perfect little book — innovative, intelligent, surprisingly moving (your heart will lurch a bit at passages you never saw coming), and utterly inventive, it also sheds new light on the loss of innocence and other sacrifices that come with becoming an adult. Whether or not you're a fan of Lethem's other work, this book should not be missed." Jill Owens, Powells.com (read the entire Powells.com review)

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Anyone who wonders why Jonathan Lethem is the only novelist to be included among Newsweek's "100 People for the New Century" need only read his deliriously original new book, a science fiction/Western that combines the tragic momentum of The Searchers with the sexual tension of Lolita.

At the age of 13, Pella Marsh emigrates with her family to the Planet of the Archbuilders. These enigmatic aborigines have names like Lonely Dumptruck and and Hiding Kneel — and a civilization that baffles and frightens their human visitors.

As the spikily independent Pella becomes an uneasy envoy between two species, Girl in Landscape deftly interweaves themes of exploration and otherness, loss and sexual awakening.

Review:

"One of the most original voices among younger American novelists....Jonathan Lethem's imagination [is]...marvelously fertile." Newsday

Review:

"Complex, scary and finally moving." Atlanta Journal & Constitution

Review:

"[T]his lyrical, often far-fetched meditation on the founding myths of the 21st century remains thoroughly rooted in an emotional world much closer to home." Publishers Weekly

Review:

"A cool, quirky, and oddly compelling coming-of-age story that raises questions that linger long after the book is read." Booklist

Review:

"[I]ngenious and unsettling....Wonderful stuff. One waits eagerly to learn where Lethem will take us next." Kirkus Reviews
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About the Author

Jonathan Lethem lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 1 comment:
Shoshana, January 25, 2007 (view all comments by Shoshana)
+ Worldbuilding, careful word choice, not over-expository
- Ending a little rushed

This is the third novel I?ve read by Lethem, and I may have to read them all. In this genre (he writes in several), Lethem creates what I?d call literary science fiction. Here (and in Amnesia Moon) the reader is immediately in medias res with little preliminary exposition and even less later clarification. This works only because Lethem is so skillful at evoking environments and social circumstances through spare, nuanced prose. Though their styles and concerns are not particularly similar, Ursula K. Le Guin?s most recent novels utilize similar techniques. The characters know where they are and why it is the way it is; the reader enters almost as an accidental observer, able to see only a small segment of a broader but obscured world.

Girl in Landscape is a bildungsroman in which the main character, the 13-year old Pella Marsh, comes of age on an alien planet, and in doing so, perhaps also signals a greater coming of age for humanity. Lethem deftly captures both adolescent angst and interpersonal complexity and shows the relationship between the qualities of the characters? psychology and expectations and their ways of seeing and understanding the world they inhabit. The landscape of the title is interior and exterior, physical and social, real and metaphorical. Overtly a tale of misplaced hopes and xenophobia, this is also a narrative of self-discovery and acknowledgement. I only wish the concluding sections had been about 20 pages longer and slightly more archetypal. Still, a terrific read.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780375703911
Author:
Lethem, Jonathan
Publisher:
Vintage Books USA
Author:
Lethem, Jonathan
Location:
New York :
Subject:
General
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Science Fiction - General
Subject:
Science fiction
Subject:
Life on other planets
Subject:
Life on other planets -- Fiction.
Subject:
Bildungsromane.
Edition Number:
1
Edition Description:
1st Vintage Contemporaries ed.
Publication Date:
January 1999
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Illustrations:
Y
Pages:
288
Dimensions:
7.99x5.13x.64 in. .52 lbs.
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