Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Girl in Landscape by Jonathan Lethem

I first became aware of Jonathan Lethem a couple of years back when he was listed as the editor of Four Novels from the 1960's by Philip K. Dick, released by Library of America. Others may recognize the name as the author of Fortress of Solitude. As someone who has read less than half the books I own (I'm better at buying or trading than reading), the last thing I need is interest in another author. However, I recently read an couple of articles about Lethem written at the release of his latest book, Chronic City (I believe both articles came from Google Alerts about Raymond Chandler). In one of the articles, What writers risk in not repeating themselves, the author wrote, "Jonathan Lethem's output is impressively diverse, but it's not going to win him a dedicated readership."

The article that really piqued my interest though, was part of the book review found on the same site:

Many of Jonathan Lethem's novels have looked like experiments in creating striking generic hybrids: Gun, With Occasional Music is a pastiche of Raymond Chandler set in a dystopian future; Girl in Landscape a western set in space; As She Climbed Across the Table a tragicomic campus novel with a science fiction twist. Lethem has always rejected the "genre bender" label, however, and perhaps trying to fit his books into too many categories is simply a way of admitting that they defy categorisation.

Yes, that's categorisation with an "S". It's a British website.

Though it frequently doesn't work well, I do enjoy seeing more than one style or genre together in the same story. It's certainly part of the charm of the space western Firefly, and though I haven't read the comic, I'm looking forward to the movie adaptation of Cowboys and Aliens.

After reading these articles, I decided I wanted to check out a couple of his books, but the library did not have Gun, With Occasional Music in the system. When I checked Half Price Books, I was glad to find that title, Girl in Landscape, and a collection of short stories (The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye), in new condition for just $4 each.

I finished reading Girl in Landscape, and it is fairly difficult to describe. A family moves from Earth to another planet that used to be a thriving alien civilization, but now lies in ruins. The book has been compared to The Searchers, but there's almost no resemblance in plot, only in setting. The planet is quite barren and the family settles in a very small community of less than 20 people and a couple of remaining aliens. Ultimately, the plot is fairly basic and not that important to the reader, only to the characters themselves. I came away from the book feeling like I'd witnessed the author conducting an experiment. Some sections of the book are hypnotic (there are some similarities to Avatar, which came later), but what the reader ultimately leaves with is the fairly tragic portrait of several teen-and-younger children who have to grow up too quickly in a place where they couldn't be more alone.

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