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A review by terprubin
The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem
2.0
This book was published in 2020. I say that to start the review because it is clear--both from the writing style and the cover art--that Lethem is trying hard to recreate a past style of writing science fiction. Another reader mentioned that this book was an attempt at Literary Fiction. I don't particularly care what you call it; I didn't enjoy it.
For a book about a time after the apocalypse, very little detail is given about the cause of the apocalypse ("the arrest") in the first place. Lethem spends quite a while describing that things stopped working, using flowery language that could have been summed up as "No one knows why. One day, shit just broke." I would have preferred that kind of honesty to the all of the unnecessary prose.
I take my worldbuilding seriously: I can forgive a bad plot if I can care about the world that the author has created. Unfortunately, we don't get that.
What we get are flashbacks, an unappealing protagonist, an antagonist who lacks any real depth, and a basic post-apocalyptic plot line that has been done (better) hundreds of times before.
I wanted to care about Sandy (the Journeyman), but I didn't. I wanted to hate Todbaum, but instead I was just annoyed by him. Sandy's sister, Maddy, is the one with the most promise as a character, but she is sadly underdeveloped.
If you are looking for a great post-apocalyptic story, Lethem mentions several others in the text that he hopes to be referencing, but in the end, this one is no masterpiece.
For a book about a time after the apocalypse, very little detail is given about the cause of the apocalypse ("the arrest") in the first place. Lethem spends quite a while describing that things stopped working, using flowery language that could have been summed up as "No one knows why. One day, shit just broke." I would have preferred that kind of honesty to the all of the unnecessary prose.
I take my worldbuilding seriously: I can forgive a bad plot if I can care about the world that the author has created. Unfortunately, we don't get that.
What we get are flashbacks, an unappealing protagonist, an antagonist who lacks any real depth, and a basic post-apocalyptic plot line that has been done (better) hundreds of times before.
I wanted to care about Sandy (the Journeyman), but I didn't. I wanted to hate Todbaum, but instead I was just annoyed by him. Sandy's sister, Maddy, is the one with the most promise as a character, but she is sadly underdeveloped.
If you are looking for a great post-apocalyptic story, Lethem mentions several others in the text that he hopes to be referencing, but in the end, this one is no masterpiece.