Customer Reviews

Castle: A Novel

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I'm struggling as to how, exactly, to describe this book. I can give you the basic plot: a man originally from small town, Upstate New York returns to where he grew up, many years after he'd left. Something terrible happened in his family while they lived there, but he's been away so long not many people remember him. He purchases a large tract of land in the country, including an older house that's falling into disrepair. The land is also partially forested with a strange, bowl-shaped forest, in the middle of which is a large rock.

The man is, how do I put this, antisocial. Perhaps pathologically so, as he's unrepentant. He considers himself superior to everyone he meets, and doesn't have a firm grasp on his temper or his tendency toward righteous indignation, even when no offense was intended. He fixes up the house on his own and moves in. When he starts exploring the forest he has strange memories that seem part flashback, part imagination. And the reader doesn't know which until much later in the book.

Telling more would be spilling the beans. And there will be no bean spilling here.

So, how did I feel about the experience of reading this book? I felt riveted. I had to know the secrets, why the main character felt such a visceral reaction to the forest, who or what was responsible for the strange things that started happening to him. What happened in his early life to make him the way he was.

There's a twist at the 3/4 point. It ties in where he'd been for many years of his absence, and how his childhood lead him to be the man he is. The switch is so sudden I didn't expect it. In fact, Lennon turns on the proverbial dime.

To those who may end up reading it, don't let it throw you too much. Keep reading. It'll all make sense by the end. A lot of readers won't like this technique. It's disruptive to the flow of what's a very exciting scene. I think it's done deftly, but not everyone will. This will be a sticking point with many, because from this point on things change rapidly and dramatically.

This is a strange novel. It reminds me of Jennifer Egan's The Keep, which is one of those love it or hate it books. I personally loved it. It won't satisfy people who like their loose ends all conveniently tied up, but those who love the dark, gothic writing of Ian McEwan may appreciate this book. It's different, but in many ways similar to his writing. It also has a Barbara Vine quality because it delves into the main character's extremely complex, partly amnesiac, perhaps psychotic mind.

It's an impressive read, but it won't be to everyone's taste. But for me? It was worth giving up sleep.

The writing style is fine, and for the first half of the book, I was pretty intrigued. Lennon set up "Castle" in such a fashion that it would have to have a pretty enthralling ending to work, and having read a few pieces by him in such places as Granta, I didn't doubt he'd pull it off. Sadly, though, he didn't.

The protagonist (so to speak) of the book, Eric Loesch, is a loner with some sort of mysterious chip on his shoulder and exceedingly poor social skills. He buys an old house surrounded by hundreds of acres of land in his old hometown and sets about remodeling the house in his odd misanthropic way, and exploring the woods surrounding it. Not much emerges for quite a while, but Lennon artfully builds a high level of tension around the scant happenings.

Then, rapidly, the book falls apart. As another review pointed out, the ending weaves in two additional plot lines into the existing narrative. Without spoiling it, one of them makes almost no logical sense without a very ardent belief in the capability of deeply-buried memories suddenly springing forth into a full consciousness which supersedes empirical reality. Here, even with the artful suspension of plausibility one might grant a writer, it makes no sense. It's unbelievable to a nearly comic extent.

Weave in an additional plot line with greater believability but even less of a connection to the pre-existing narrative and . . . well, you've lost me as a reader. I reread the last fifty pages three times trying to find some cohesion or point to the book. And I failed each time. I'd consider this book the product of someone who just cannot write, were it not for the fact that Lennon's style is impressive and that I've read fine things by him before. Even as a curiosity, this would be a tough book to recommend.

I really wanted to like this book. In fact, I wanted to love it. The premise was enchanting, and despite the highly unlikable main character, the story started out intriguing. I actually did love it, at least for the first half of the book.

Erik Loesch is a terrible "protagonist." That word is in quotes because frankly, the guy is a real jerk. He's unfriendly and presumptive. He not only brushes off a hardware store clerk's attempts to make conversation, but basically challenges the poor guy for no reason at all. He's brusque and unpleasant. In a tale where we should at least start out rooting for the guy as we get to know him, I ended up not liking him any further than I could throw him (and I can't throw a grown man very far at all). He likes to talk about how highly skilled he is at certain things, how very disciplined, how very this, how very that. Reading that much boasting just gave me a headache.

The first half of this story is not only interesting, but it is absolutely addicting. I could not put the book down until I reached the halfway point. Once the plot begins to come together a bit more, it becomes apparent that this just isn't working. It's not. Almost nothing in the second half of the book makes any sense, and a good number of the questions that the first half raised go unanswered. The author should have picked a storyline and stayed with it, because by the time we get to the last chapter or two, there isn't a single thing between those pages that makes a lick of sense anymore. And that is a sad thing, because it had such a good start.

The quality of writing in any J. Robert Lennon book is always unbelievably good. He is a master of the evocative detail and the unspoken truth. In this book, narrated in first person, he develops a perfect personal diction to suit a man sitting on an undetonated device of rage, suppression, repression and submerged memory. This is an intensely political story that avoids polemic, a short treatise on warfare and humanity that avoids being strident. But it is also a very difficult story to endure.

This is the third book by Lennon I've read. I loved Light of Falling Stars and did not like The Mailman at ALL. The problem is never with the writing, or even the plotting, though in Stars the plotting is minimal--it is more of an extended character study. In Mailman, the plot is a detailed, painful peeling back of a man's denial to reach the unsavory, shameful truths within, disease both physical and mental.

In Castle, Lennon has certainly given us a plot as well as a character. But the parallel track of the outer plot (buying and restoring the house, discovering the hidden aspects of the property, confrontation and retribution) runs quite tidily along the plot of the character's inner discoveries (that peeling away done so ably in Mailman). It's perfectly done and riveting after a fashion, but as with Mailman, Lennon asks a lot of his readers.

We are expected to identify with and develop sympathy for a character who has, as far as I can see, only the barest glimmers of anything lovable left in his psyche. The process of expungement is not his fault, and I felt awful for him, but I did not care for him. He was vivisected for me, every sad aspect of how he became who he was laid out on a table for me to see. But I couldn't do much but take it in and look away.

This book takes an unflinching look at the creation of a monster, and the political uses to which a person like that is put. I am definitely passing it on to the menfolk in my family, and I will be interested in their reactions to it. It's a thought-provoking and well-crafted novel. It's just not to my taste.

"Castle" is a mixed bag. It starts well, increased the creepy factor tenfold, then tried to pull a switch that has one scratching their head wondering how it all fits together.

The first 3/4 of the novel is well done with a great tone and intriguing setting. The woods make for an immersive and hostile environment, the house seems tangible, and the tension level is raised with each passing chapter. The reader is taken on a ride, wondering who Eric Loesch is, exactly.

Calm, collected, self-assured, angry, private, and voliatile. Written that way, he's a protagonist that is hard to like, but still enough so that you want to keep finding out bits and pieces of his past. Uncovering where he comes from, what brings him back to his hometown, and why he is having strange run-ins with the locals is part of what makes this novel so attention-grabbing.

By contrast, the ending quarter of the book felt rushed, almost pushed at the reader trying to come up with an explanation that didnt really fit the novel at all. The relationship between Eric and the antagonist of the story is creepy, disturbing, and certainly intriguing- to say the least. For me however, it didnt tie into the novel well when taken with the ending. Eric is a conflicted character that is complex, deep, mysterious, and lethal- but to end the novel in the way the author did (I cant say how, that would give away too much), I- as the reader- felt cheated.

Building the suspense of the novel as he does, J. Robert Lennon seemed to grow tired of his own creation. It was as if the story puttered out and needed to be wrapped up to get it done. The end didnt fit, the character seemed out of place, and the flashback/out of body sequence felt disjointed and harried.

Three stars for atmosphere and character development. The conclusion, however isnt worthy of the greatness that preceded it.

Castle had potential and I have to admit that I really wanted to like it. Unfortunately, I wanted to like it much more than I actually did.

Castle is the story of Eric Loesch, a rather unpleasant individual (and the novel's highly suspect narrator) who returns to his home town, buys a plot of land and discovers a mysterious chuck of it isn't owned by him. The mystery, once solved, opens up several parts of Loesch's past which are all reflected on. The great mystery to the reader is Loesch's reliability as a narrator. As the story evolves, it is less and less certain what's real and what's reliably conveyed to the reader.

Weighing in at 225 pages, Castle isn't a long book but at times it felt nearly endless. And by the second half, I have to admit I'd pretty much checked out. Based on the book's blurbs, I figured there would be a turn, a revelation towards the end of the novel but when it finally revealed itself, I was no longer interested. Castle would have been an excellent short story but it made for an average and somewhat disappointing novel.

The first half of J. Robert's Castle reads like a horror novel, or at the very least some combination of a thriller mystery novel. Told through the point of view of its protagonist, Eric Loesch, a former solider, who returns to his childhood home of Gerrysburg, New York. He buys a small dilapidated house outside of town, surrounded by an eerily quite forest It's only creature is a white deer. As Loesch investigates a mysterious gigantic rock, he starts to learn about his parents untimely death.

Then the novel takes a serious turn that will lose more than a few readers as Loesch, who for the first half, told very little about himself, his childhood. He keeps to himself in Gerrysburg, offering little to its residents, who generally know nothing about him or his former parents. In the second half of the novel, he suddenly opens up about his childhood and time in the military. If readers can accept this sudden twist and Loesch unreliably narrator status, they are in for a strange, literary novel. I don't mind an unreliable narrator, but found Lennon's choice of this point of view disappointing.

The end too is abrupt. The novel seems to have most of the plot and characters worked out. It's not just ambiguous, but also just about erases events in the novel. I honestly think the novel should stop one chapter earlier, but I will leave that to other readers to debate.

"Castle" is a very well written book that pulled me from the very start. J. Robert Lennon is a talented writer and his story kept me enthralled to midway through the book, but unfortunately the plot seriously falls apart and becomes so bogged down that it was difficult to finish reading.

No plot spoilers from me... The story follows Eric Loesch and his attempt to settle into a normal life after leaving the military. Moving back to his old home town, it turns out the property he bought holds at least one mystery that he becomes determined to solve. The story takes some very interesting turns and intriguing revelations are made... but degrades at the end into something other than it started as.

I really wanted to like Castle, but it failed to deliver on it's early promise. Not Recommended.

The Castle. What is it and why does the narrator of this story seem so confused about his own past, both recent and the past of his childhood?

Eric Loesch is an odd and unsettling character. His conversations, with us and the people of the hometown he has recently returned to are stiff and uncomfortable. He is paranoid, yet not delusional about who he is and how he is perceived. The reader immediately gets the feeling that Loesch is a completely unreliable narrator, possibly a liar and that his amnesiac behavior is actually a symptom of some larger psychological problem he has yet to deal with.

Loesch is not a sympathetic character, in this humble reviewer's opinion. He is arrogant and frightening. I found this novel very readable, and thankfully short; Lennon does an excellent job of building up an incredible amount of suspense and tension until nearly the very end of the novel.

This is a suspenseful and grown up story, and it should appeal to those who like Stephen King as well as Nelson DeMille. The writing is excellent. Overall, a good book, but not one that I would recommend to a lot of my friends--just too intense, and without giving anything away, the story was slightly depressing.

The plot of "The Castle" begins when Eric Loesch, a middle-aged, single man, comes back to settle down in Gerrysburg, the town in upstate New York, where he spent his childhood. Eric buys a big, wooded property with a dilapidated house and a rock towering in the middle, and quickly sets off to work on renovations. He proceeds fast, discovering more and more about the house and finding small things left by previous tenants. He is very wary in his relations to the local people he needs to interact with - estate agent, electrician, shop assistants and owners. Sometimes he seems to be really rude... But when he receives the title to his property, he discovers that next to the rock, at the center of his property, there is a spot that does not belong to him and that the owner's name had been blacked out. He starts his own investigation...

The beginning of this novel sounds captivating and I got it hoping there will be interesting twists and turns. Instead, I got a cheap pseudo-psychological horror story, reminding me a bit of a movie "The Secret Window" with Johnny Depp. As well as with that movie, I was disappointed. It is the easiest way to write, explaining weird events with the protagonist's mental problems, and it is clear from the beginning that Eric's state of mind is, at the very best, disturbed.

The narrative is extremely simple, Loesch is telling his story in his own voice and it allows for many omissions and hints. However, the prose is simplified to the extreme (I guess on purpose, to give an impression of Loesch's state of mind and style, but repetitive use of the same adjectives is just boring for the reader). I was interested till the point when Loesch makes his discovery while exploring the woods, although the descriptions of his wanderings, as well as the details of house renovations, bored me massively. The escapades to the forest reminded me of yet another movie, "The Blair Witch Project". In conclusion, the book cannot be very original, if so many other works come to mind... But I have to give the author credit that to the certain point he kept me hooked and I was even a little scared (not nearly as much as I can be with some good horrors ;-)). The second half I only read to finish the book - it was a mix of all the possible problems that could be found in such books - there was childhood trauma, mad professor, psychological experiments, mysterious house, labyrinthine edifices and woods, visions, PTSD from the Iraq mission... All scrambled together but not well organized and quite sloppy.

I am giving "The Castle" three stars only because it got me scared at some point, but otherwise it was rather a waste of time. I did not like the main character, I did not like the developments and the ending. There were some points I could appreciate, like excellent use of the weather conditions in the plot. The natural elements are an important factor here and I could admire this device.