Changes

|title=Dissident Gardens

|author=Jonathan Lethem

|publisher=Vintage

|date=January 2015

|website=http://www.jonathanlethem.com/

|video=9_690XtjJDY

|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.

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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.