Review by Booklist Review
After burning out as an also-ran scriptwriter in L.A., Sandy "Journeyman" Duplessis is settled on his sister Maddy's communal organic farm in coastal Maine when the world's technology suddenly ceases to function. In the Arrest, phones, computers, and televisions become useless; transportation, communication, and the global economy soon grind to a halt. Sandy's former writing partner, the cynical yet charismatic Peter Todbaum, became a dealmaker embraced by Hollywood powerbrokers for his Midas touch. Todbaum is a quintessential Lethemian protagonist; whip-smart, with an endless vocabulary, he can deploy said verbal acumen with devastating effect. Having anticipated civilization's collapse, Todbaum uses his wealth to develop a nuclear-powered super car with a lead-lined cabin replete with an espresso machine. In this tank-like steampunk vehicle, Todbaum sets off across the country in search of his long-lost friend and partner. Following a foray into crime fiction, The Feral Detective (2018), Lethem cleverly builds on and subverts the tropes of postapocalyptic dystopias, mixes in a metafictional element, and expertly mines the nature of storytelling and its power to enchant. An inventive and intelligent speculative tale.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Lethem (The Feral Detective) returns with a lukewarm tale of an apocalypse set in the very near future. Sandy Duplessis worked as a screenwriter in Los Angeles with his friend Peter Todbaum. Then came the Arrest, an unexplained event that caused computers and other technology to stop working and reduced everyone to locavores. In the aftermath, Sandy, who calls himself Journeyman, ends up in rural Maine working as a butcher and delivering food grown by his sister, Maddy. When Todbaum shows up and starts pursuing Mandy, their simple life gets complicated. The locals feel threatened by Todbaum's presence, and Sandy, who is unnerved by Todbaum's claim that he predicted the Arrest, wonders if his old friend can be trusted, while Maddy, who begins sleeping with Todbaum, becomes his sole defender. Lethem's prose is as great as ever ("Journeyman was a middle person, a middleman. Always locatable between things, and therefore special witness in both directions, to extremes remote to one another, an empathic broker between irreconcilable poles--or so he flattered himself"), but despite the fine writing, the plot fails to coalesce into something engaging, the Arrest remains murky, and many scenes feel disjointed. Still, the project crackles and hums with witty dialogue and engaging ideas. While it's not entirely satisfying, Lethem's fans won't mind. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Protean award winner Lethem here conducts us through the Arrest, a weirdly undefinable time when everything from computers to guns have stopped working. Screenwriter Sandy Duplessis, who has retreated to Maine to help his organic farmer sister, suddenly finds himself playing host to old writing partner Peter Todbaum, who arrives from Hollywood with unclear intentions and a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. With a 125,000-copy first printing.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
After the apocalypse, two former Hollywood pals find themselves at odds with one another. Lethem is an odd duck on the best of days, so it's no wonder his new novel imagines the end of the world through a peculiar lens. After his Big Lebowski--esque version of noir in The Feral Detective (2018), here he takes on the end of the world in a strange amalgamation of 1970s disaster movie, '80s yuppie comedy, and seemingly whatever else came out of the kitchen sink. The lead here is Alexander "Sandy" Duplessis, who, in the wake of a major disaster called the Arrest that wiped out (gasp!) television and then eventually the internet and all contemporary communications, became essentially a modern version of David Brin's The Postman (1985), here called Journeyman. Our guy divides his time between making deliveries and studying under the local butcher. The Journeyman got stuck in rural New England when everything went to hell, visiting his sister Maddy's farm in what seems to have become a feudal community in Maine. Things go sideways when Sandy's old Yale roommate and Hollywood writing partner Peter Todbaum turns up in a nuclear "supercar" called The Blue Streak--modeled on the vehicle out of the old '70s post-apocalyptic movie Damnation Alley--that can apparently tunnel underground and operate underwater, among other things. The backstory is that the two men were working on a project in Hollywood ("Todbaum the bullshitter, Journeyman the hands on the keyboard"). But then something uncomfortable happened between Todbaum and Journeyman's sister. Lethem is certainly capable of having gone full-on Cormac McCarthy here, but instead this is pretty much a sly play on post-apocalyptic fantasies, with the operative word being play. Superminimalist writing, short chapters, interstitial images from the Journeyman's scrapbook, and Lethem's unusual perspective make for odd bedfellows, but it's a decent distraction from the real world right now. A meditation on a dystopian future that maintains a careful balance between social satire and purposeful provocation. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
