Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem
Rose Zimmer, a feisty American communist radical, takes on many good and great causes. These include everything from feminism and racism to the changing course of Stalinism in the American C.P. but most of all; her biggest causes are the people around her. The effects upon them are diverse and devastating. She often propels them to success but at the same time they feel battered and must escape according to their own needs. Her affections are real but invasive. Rose keeps a shrine to Abraham Lincoln. Rose’s self-assertion within the perimeters of the German-designed 20th Century New York suburb of Queens, a multi-cultural suburb and a planned housing development similar to Hampstead Garden City provide the setting for Jonathan Lethem’s Tour de Force.
| Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem | |
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| Category: General Fiction | |
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Reviewer: George Care
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| Summary: Jonathan Lethem's intriguing and exciting ninth novel set in New York charts revolutionaries and activists, the civil rights movement and the counterculture, from the 1930s to the Occupy movement. A pleasure to read and a challenging tour de force. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 366 | Date: January 2015 |
| Publisher: Vintage | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-0099563426 | |
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Reading Dissident Gardens is rather like taking a plane to New York and perhaps linked into a time-machine to peruse 80 years of political tensions that stress three generations. Lethem, who trained as an artist, is quite superb at visually rendering the city brown brick tenements, elevated railways, grand bridges and squares, together with their uses. Some of the latter, for instance, under the influence of socially concerned denizens like Rose, have been commandeered into communal gardens. Additionally, you even get a taste of the food from iced bear-claws, milkshakes and salt-beef sandwiches. His ear is at least as strong as his eye and the salty, saucy language carries the vigorous impact of Italian, Irish, Hispanic and Yiddish all gemischt. The reader will benefit from access to a good dictionary of urban slang to navigate this environment as much as his or her GPS so as not to lose your way in this city jungle.
As with a city break, the most interesting aspect of any visit is meeting the locals. Here Lethem provides a panoply of fabulous characters. His technique is such that you he reveals not just the stream of consciousness but also the fractured and sometimes damaged nature of their sudden preoccupations. There's Cicero Lookins, the brilliant, angry, black, gay and overweight college lecturer. He has the dubious privilege of becoming Rose’s protégé and carries the burden of growing up the son of a nurse who is suffering from chronic lupus and a conventional heroic policeman from the NYPD who has become Rose’s lover. Cicero is a volatile mixture of intelligence, cynicism and compulsive sexuality. His lecturing style challenges the young and indolent yawning student audience that attend his social philosophy lectures. He is reading Robert Musil’s grand, scarcely completed novel, The Man Without Qualities. He has become imprisoned by his own psychological defences and just how this developed is lucidly, believably and eloquently explained with a certain ironic sympathy.
Each chapter can almost be taken as a story within itself. This is a satisfying approach as there is little in the way of a page-turning narrative to speed the story forward. Indeed, this is a novel that casts light upon what has happened in previous chapters as well as links with other persons. It jumps around and resonates in time. This backward linking is intriguing in itself and gradually makes the relationships between the characters memorable. Dissident Gardens is not always easy to read but the detail, texture and breadth of the writing weaves a brisk believable magic as the story progresses. Idealism is often exposed in its naivety in this novel. The characters, as in real life, are often deeply wounded by losses but remain authentic in their striving.
Reading about Lethem’s writing methods- said to be on an exercise machine using a voice operated word processor- accounts for the energy of the writing. The style is sometimes abrasive but also beguiling. This novel can be described as both tragic and comic. Tragic in the sense that the characters often seem isolated and comic because the reader will recognise some of his own impulses and be encouraged to laugh at them. I am left reminded by the words of a song from the musical Hair: - Do you only care about the bleeding crowd? How about a needing friend? I need a friend. If there is a message from this novel, it is about our need for human closeness and how the grand systems we erect prevent us getting in touch with each other.
Thanks to Vintage for sending the review copy.
FURTHER READING SUGGESTIONS
You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem and Indignation by Philip Roth
Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem is in the Top Ten General Fiction Books for 2015.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Dissident Gardens by Jonathan Lethem at Amazon.com.
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