Girl in Landscape [Import] [Paperback]

Jonathan Lethem (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Faber and Faber Ltd
• ISBN-10: 057120600X
• ISBN-13: 978-0571206001
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Jonathan Lethem was born in New York and attended Bennington College.

He is the author of seven novels including Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, which was named Novel of the Year by Esquire and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Salon Book Award, as well as the Macallan Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger.

He has also written two short story collections, a novella and a collection of essays, edited The Vintage Book of Amnesia, guest-edited The Year's Best Music Writing 2002, and was the founding fiction editor of Fence magazine.

His writings have appeared in the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, McSweeney's and many other periodicals.

He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Odd, but strangely compelling, June 5, 2000

By 

Paula Gaffney - See all my reviews

This review is from: Girl in Landscape: A Novel (Paperback)

A copy of "Girl in Landscape" has been kicking around my house for a few months now. What compelled me to buy it escapes me. Especially since I tend to avoid coming-of-age stories. But there it was and there I was on a rainy Sunday afternoon. I got through the first quarter of the book and was getting ready to put it down when the story grabbed me. Jonathan Lethem has written a wonderfully engrossing novel set in a strange yet familiar setting. A strong case can be made comparing "Girl in Landscape" to many westerns, but what came to my mind was the old TV series "The Twilight Zone". Extraordinary outside influences driving an all to human story. But, like the Rod Serling classic, the world of the Archbuilders can be a dark and desolate place full of human weakness, frailty, bigotry, desire and emotion. This is a fine book worthy of a larger audience. I'm sorry I didn't read it sooner.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deep and Compelling, October 2, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Girl in Landscape (Hardcover)

Jonathan Lethem has shown an amazing command of different genres, from the pulp "Gun, With Occasional Music" to the road trip "Amnesia Moon" to the twisted romance of "As She Climbed Across the Table." To call Lethem a Science Fiction Author is to do him a grave disservice by limiting the great scope of his small body of work.

"Girl with Landscape" is a of coming-of-age western set on a dreary planet with the ruins of an alien civilization. Pella Marsh, the central character, represents innocent youth, but also the strength of youth that most adults refuse to acknowledge.

The characters are all too real, especially in their bigotry and hatred, and the aliens are well-thought out, garnering are sympathy and occasionally our irritation and even disgust.

No lines are drawn clearly and no easy routes are taken in this novel. It's dreary and dark, but a brilliant work worth reading by anyone who likes good writing and a good story.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous sci-fi western bildungsroman--what else?, August 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Girl in Landscape: A Novel (Paperback)

"Gorgeous" is the adjective that kept coming to mind after reading this. A great hybrid of science-fiction, western and coming-of-age novels (a sort of post-bildungsroman story). I really cannot understand why other readers found the grown-ups in the novel two-dimensional. They were absolutely real, and Efram Nugent is a bigger-than-life character that reaches mythical status. One should thank Lethem for his ability to show how surrealistic the United States can be. And his absolutely perfect, terse style, that is getting better and better as he goes on! After this, one wonders what comes next... definitely one of the best novels of the 90s.