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3.21 AVERAGE
3.21 AVERAGE
I was annoyed by how thin the plot was throughout the book. Lethem’s mastery of the English language left me in awe though. His characters flaws are raw and they cut at you but each character seems so real and is so full of heart. A joy, if only to get to know the characters.
I think, his best since Fortress of Solitude. Maybe I should give it 4 stars, but I can't imagine rereading it - it's bleakness and dispersed anger is something I have trouble dealing with, lately.
I confess, I took this book back to the library without completing it- which goes against everything I believe in. I just couldn't get into it and wasn't remotely bothered about the characters.
Forrest Gump updated and reimagined as a multi-generational family saga with the matriarch being a busybody, communist, ex-communist from Sunnyside, Queens. Lethem even manages to include the Occupy movement. Unfortunately, it really didn't move me.
If I hadn't paid for the audiobook to listen to while walking, I'm not sure I would have finished this one. I started it in September, got tired of it, and had to restart it when I picked it back up in January. Ultimately, I'm glad I stuck with it, but I didn't think it was as good as "Motherless Brooklyn" or "The Fortress of Solitude."
Although, I love multi-generational historical fiction and usually like Letham's books, I was completely ambivalent about Dissident Gardens. Perhaps I need to know New York and American communism better, but I couldn't care less about any of the characters.
Torn about this one. It has most of the stuff I enjoy in Letham's work--marvelously clear prose, fastidious intellect, and a sly sense of humor--but the network narrative, cross-cutting between Rose, Miriam, Lenny, Cicero, and Sergius, was done in a way that for me only served to diffuse my investment in each of these characters.