Dissident Gardens

Author:   Jonathan Lethem ,  Mark Bramhall
Publisher:   Books on Tape
ISBN:  

9780307940919


Publication Date:   17 September 2013
Format:   Audio  Audio Format
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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Dissident Gardens


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Overview

A dazzling novel from one of our finest writers an epic yet intimate family saga about three generations of all-American radicals At the center of Jonathan Lethem s superb new novel stand two extraordinary women: Rose Zimmer, the aptly nicknamed Red Queen of Sunnyside, Queens, is an unreconstructed Communist who savages neighbors, family, and political comrades with the ferocity of her personality and the absolutism of her beliefs. Her precocious and willful daughter, Miriam, equally passionate in her activism, flees Rose s influence to embrace the dawning counterculture of Greenwich Village. These women cast spells over the men in their lives: Rose s aristocratic German Jewish husband, Albert; her cousin, the feckless chess hustler Lenny Angrush; Cicero Lookins, the brilliant son of her black cop lover; Miriam s (slightly fraudulent) Irish folksinging husband, Tommy Gogan; their bewildered son, Sergius. Flawed and idealistic, Lethem s characters struggle to inhabit the utopian dream in an America where radicalism is viewed with bemusement, hostility, or indifference. As the decades pass from the parlor communism of the 30s, McCarthyism, the civil rights movement, ragged 70s communes, the romanticization of the Sandinistas, up to the Occupy movement of the moment we come to understand through Lethem s extraordinarily vivid storytelling that the personal may be political, but the political, even more so, is personal. Lethem s characters may pursue their fates within History with a capital H, but his novel is at its mesmerizing, beating heart about love. From the Hardcover edition.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jonathan Lethem ,  Mark Bramhall
Publisher:   Books on Tape
Imprint:   Books on Tape
Dimensions:   Width: 18.30cm , Height: 4.70cm , Length: 16.70cm
Weight:   0.485kg
ISBN:  

9780307940919


ISBN 10:   0307940918
Publication Date:   17 September 2013
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Audio
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

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Reviews

While collective memory might offer some hazy grasp of McCarthyism and the Hollywood black-lists, all but forgotten is the real American Communist Party and its Depression-era heyday. In this epic and complex new novel, Lethem considers what happened to the ACP, as well as some other questions, about material isolation and filial resentment...The cast makes for a heady, swirly mix of fascinating, lonely people. Lethem's writing, as always, packs a witty punch. The epoch each character inhabits is artfully etched and the book is as illuminating of 20th-century American history as it is of the human burden of overcoming alienation. <br>-- Publishers Weekly<br><br> A dysfunctional family embodies a dysfunctional epoch, as the novelist continues his ambitious journey through decades, generations and the boroughs of New York...The setup of this novel is so frequently funny that it reads like homage to classic Philip Roth. <br>-- Kirkus Reviews


Claiming to have lost my reviewer's copy of Jonathan Lethem's Dissident Gardens, I asked his publicist at Doubleday to send a couple more galleys my way...I wanted the additional copies so I could press them into the hands of close family and dear friends, telling them as I did so: 'Here, read the year's best novel.' --Alexander Nazaryan for The New Republic Lethem is as ambitious as Mailer, as funny as Philip Roth and as stinging as Bob Dylan... Dissident Gardens shows Lethem in full possession of his powers as a novelist, as he smoothly segues between historical periods and internal worlds...Erudite, beautifully written, wise, compassionate, heartbreaking and pretty much devoid of nostalgia. -- Los Angeles Times While collective memory might offer some hazy grasp of McCarthyism and the Hollywood black-lists, all but forgotten is the real American Communist Party and its Depression-era heyday. In this epic and complex new novel, Lethem considers what happened to the ACP, as well as some other questions, about material isolation and filial resentment...The cast makes for a heady, swirly mix of fascinating, lonely people. Lethem's writing, as always, packs a witty punch. The epoch each character inhabits is artfully etched and the book is as illuminating of 20th-century American history as it is of the human burden of overcoming alienation. -- Publishers Weekly Lethem extends his stylistically diverse, loosely aligned, deeply inquiring saga of New York City ( Motherless Brooklyn, 1999; The Fortress of Solitude, 2003; Chronic City, 2009) with a richly saturated, multigenerational novel about a fractured family of dissidents headquartered in Queens...Lethem is breathtaking in this torrent of potent voices, searing ironies, pop-culture allusions, and tragicomic complexities. He shreds the folk scene, eviscerates quiz shows, pays bizarre tribute to Archie Bunker, and offers unusual perspectives on societal debates and trag


Author Information

JONATHAN LETHEM is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including Chronic City, The Fortress of Solitude, Motherless Brooklyn, and the nonfiction collection The Ecstasy of Influence, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Lethem s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper s, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and The New York Times, among other publications.

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