Beautiful book but not quite as compelling as the first two novels. Lerner is very much in his "dad" era -- one misses the edged sincerity of 10:04 or even the maudlin utopianism of his poetry.

I was intrigued by this book but bored by the rioting when I first picked it up. Getting through the audiobook was easier because I liked the narration, but I’m not convinced this story really did what the author wanted it to do.

Some fine writing, overall, but the third and first person sections sound very similar, and oddly/interestingly both are sort of detached. The clinical style might seem fitting for the subject matter, but it also keeps the reader at arms length from the characters.

I attempted this book twice, but both times I found myself a little confused as to what was happening and so distracted while reading that I couldn't focus. Sadly, this is a DNF for me.

An exploration of toxic masculinity in one family in America's heartland. I found The Topeka School to be both insightful and infuriating at the same time. Reading this book during the #metoo era gives me little patience for toxic male behavior—I'm fed up with excuses for male behavior, but it is also fascinating to read about at the same time.

I had been looking forward to reading The Topeka School for months, and was so excited to get a free galley of the novel. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy the writing style: every character, regardless of their age or gender, sounded exactly the same as the one before it.

The Topeka School is intellectual and ambitious, but fell short of my (admittedly very high) expectations after reading Atocha Station and 10:04. Exploring the topic of toxic masculinity, this book was at times breathtaking but other times quite messy, making it a difficult read to stay excited about and engrossed in.

Understanding the current political and cultural polarization is at the heart of much fiction today, although doing so in a sophisticated and subtle way is not often easy. In the world filled with self parodies like Trump how does one answer of how we got here without a heavy hand?

In many ways, Ben Lerner has managed to do that in his acclaimed third novel, THE TOPEKA SCHOOL. Taking place mostly in the mid 1990s, in the middle of the Clinton years but also in the heart of red America Kansas, surrounded by plotting libertarians or fanatic followers of Fred Phelps, Lerner reflects back onto his own experiences as a champion debater. He recounts his partly fictionalized past, an adolescence filled with conflicting feelings and ideas that would germinate (at least with others) into the toxic masculinity of hate and violence that are quickly becoming ubiquitous in the here and now. Switching back and forth between the naarative voices of Adam (himself), Jane (his mother) and Jonathan (his father), Lerner delves into the big ideas of relationships we have with our family, our friends and our colleagues, trying to figure how these most basic relationships in the past have shaped and poisoned the well of contemporary America.

Lerner uses his skills as a poet to tell his story in a lyrical but blunt prose, a style that I would have liked less a few years ago but that I have grown to admire. At times direct, at other times surreal, jumping back and forth in time disorienting the reader. Lerner's writing (like a good poet) forces the reader to slow down, to read more deliberately and thoughtfully. It is the only way to appreciate what Lerner is doing here.

In the end, Lerner may have produced the best American novel of the year, speaking to the cultural and political zeitgeist in an unexpected way, tackling the crisis from an unexpected angle. Brilliantly written, this is a book that will sit with me for a while.

I DNF'd this book. It just wasn't for me. There was just too much packed into this book. I couldn't connect with the characters. I really tried hard to not give up on it but after some time I decided to let it go. It seems that fans of his work truly like this book but this was my first time reading Lerner and there was just too much to swift through adn I didnt' have the desire to do the work.

When I first picked up this book, I was not interested in the story and had a difficult time becoming intrigued by the story. But, then the audiobook came out and it was terrific. This story is an semi-autobiographical book based on Lerner's life story from high school to university and forward.
I really was surprised at how compelling each section of the story was. The characters were rich and well developed and interesting. I enjoyed the variety in the different aspects of the stories. The storyline was compelling with a well written commentary on the social situation that young people are facing today. The insights into the origins of today's toxic masculinity and "haters" who are an accepted part of the online world are thought-provoking.
I also enjoyed the way language is used in so many different ways, including as a manipulation tool during debate competitions. These are insights that are not well known to non-debaters so it is interesting in the way language is used for and against an argument.
For those who had difficulty with the written version, I would highly recommend the audio version! This is a possible reread at some point.

#TheTopekaSchool #NetGalley #FarrarStrausandGiroux

THE TOPEKA SCHOOL
Ben Lerner
Farrar Straus Giroux; 304 pp.; 2019


My my: here’s a moo cow coming down the road! And there’s Baby Tuckoo! The references to Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist” are oddly grounding as you read Ben Lerner’s second novel — they’re a reminder that you are adrift in a shape-shifting narrative that trades in stream of consciousness, external and internal voices, and time travel. Extremely immersive, dense, and somehow quite readable (also re-readable — one has to backtrack a lot to establish what’s happening), “Topeka School” is a most curious outing.

Three principal characters carry things here: a career psychotherapist; his wife — a best-selling author of a ’how-to’ marriage manual; and their son, growing into an intellect in his own right. Chapters shift between their perspectives, some in the first person, some told in an unseen and yet not omniscient hand. As advertised, much of the time, the setting is in Topeka, KS, where Lerner hails from — the school of the title is an institute for psychotherapy — but a great deal also involves time spent in an academic Manhattan. So things are rather rarified; even in the Midwestern world — you will see a great deal of sniping at ‘flyover’ culture — these folks are from a world apart. Therapist Jonathan plies his trade, but worries over his commitment as a father; Jane the author dodges local men who harass her for being a ‘home wrecker’ with her advice; son Adam grows into a prominent poet, after earlier years as a gifted debater — his life is informed by a concussion he has while young, causing him to hear voices and see other dimensions. We are looking in on these people, though of course they are related, one by one, in lengthy and detailed views, over a span of fifty years — protest marches in the 60’s, rap culture in the 90’s, and the present day miasma of Trump and the G.O.P. all figuring in the backdrops. There are cameos by Bob Dole and Cardi B! They don’t really matter, except they do: they’re part of the immense fabric under consideration. There is some adultery; the campus setting of the institute lends to it, not that that’s the only place. And there are occasional flare-ups of adolescent violence. This last element is a part of the novel that doesn’t seem to meld with the rest so well: between chapters focusing on the principal characters, there are italicized sidebars that feature an alienated loner, a childhood and then teenage dropout neighbor of Adam’s — one Darren. You imagine that his appearances will lead to something tragic, given his depressed nature, but they really don’t. So it’s hard to grasp exactly what he’s doing here?

All told, “Topeka School” is engaging — it’s a talented and kaleidoscopic story touching down just about everywhere in modern life. But come prepared: it demands great attention, and I suppose, familiarity and comfort with an extremely urban, neurotic sensibility. The author teaches English in Brooklyn, and though they say you can’t take the country out of the country boy, it’s true in the opposite path of a city intellect as well. I do wonder how this will play in Peoria —



DREW HART is from Santa Barbara, California and does not believe in star ratings

This first taste
This first taste, for me, of Ben Lerner, was an impressive immersion. The book is dense yet lucid, tricksy in its timelines yet beautifully synthesized and often lyrical. There’s a dreamyness to its layers of memory and meaning, and a deeply unsettling quality to the experiences of mania that occur. Above all, its politics are relevant and powerfully expressed. If a man can write a feminist book, this might be it.

For me, this book was hard to follow and even harder to like. The narrative rambled on and on, I didn't especially like any of the characters, and it felt like the author was constantly patting himself on the back for how 'intelligent and relevant' this book is. Not for me.

This semi-autobiographical novel reintroduces the reader to Adam Gordon, first met in Leaving the Atocha Station and the unnamed narrator of 10:04. In this new book, set mainly in the 1990s and told through the perspective of several characters, we go back to Adam’s high school years in Topeka, Kansas where he is a star of the debate team (as was Lerner himself) and where his parents work as therapists at a psychological institute, The Foundation, a fictionalised version of Topeka’s Menninger Foundation where Lerner’s own parents worked. It’s a challenging novel with many themes and is an attempt to explore modern America in all its diversity. So much is packed into the narrative that for me it lost focus and became just too overloaded. And indeed that is one of the themes of the novel, that we are too overloaded - by speech, by images, by information – that it’s hard to keep grounded. All the characters’ lives revolve around speech and language in some way and the breakdown of language is a major concern, whether it’s to express the ineffable or the mundane. And if we can’t express ourselves then violence often results, as it does with one of the more disadvantaged characters in the book. Lerner describes “the spread” when debaters talk so quickly and about so many topics that they become incomprehensible, much as political rhetoric, if delivered too vehemently, can become meaningless. It’s a dense, thoughtful and intelligent novel, but for me not the masterpiece many are claiming it is. Politics, language, especially the obfuscation and manipulation of language and the coarsening of political language into soundbites, toxic masculinity, dispossession, Donald Trump, Fred Phelps and his infamous Westboro Church – it’s all here, and in some ways that is exhilarating. But ultimately for me it was just too overwhelming, and as a novel that is language driven I found it hard to relate to the characters. A cold and intellectual novel that engaged my interest but not my emotions.

It's fiction, but only sort of. Ben Lerner has made a career on writing what he knows....but changing enough things that it's fiction.

I think I'm supposed to be overwhelmed by talent or of the...'story' of this book, but honestly...blah. I didn't care that much.

It's very...too much. Toxic masculinity, feminist theory, mental health, family turmoil, middle America, the 90s....It's putting every hot thing in a pot and expecting the stew to taste good and not just overpowered by word vomit.

This will receive a ton of praise but not from me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Sadly, this book was just not for me. The story is told through three primary perspectives: Adam, Jane (his mother) and Jonathan (his father). There is very little dialogue in this novel. It's primarily made up of a stream of consciousness of each character in their own chapters, in my opinion. There is also a side story of Darren, another student at the Topeka School who is special needs and faces problems.

I felt like the author tried to pack too many hot button issues, ex. Trumpism, immigration, #metoo movement, into the stories but I felt like it fell short. I wanted more than I got when a lot of these topics were mentioned. The writing was well done but this book just wasn't for me.

The Topeka School is hard for me to describe as the plot is less important than the characters and how they develop. At the center is Adam, a high school student and debate competitor expected to win the national championship. A fellow classmate, Darren, gets short interstitial chapters, but Adam is the clear focus as the narrative also shifts to Adam’s mother and father, Jane and Jonathan, both psychotherapists who work at “The Topeka School” which gives the book its name.

Adam is smart and comfortably upper-middle-class while Darren is less well off and less intelligent. It is clear that Darren is, or is perceived to be, developmentally disabled. So, for example, the neighbor’s son tolerates him when he’s helping his dad, but avoids him around friends. His senior year he gets included more, but its inclusion as a form of mockery and cruelty that becomes clear after a night of drinking. Both Darren and Adam struggle with anger and the anger of men is a theme running through this book.

Male anger is the theme. One of the professors describes American culture as a form of relative deprivation, not so much of material things, but of psychic values. For example, being told they are rugged individuals while really they are just one in a mass of similar men, not really men, but Peter Pans never growing up…”since America is adolescence without end, boys without religion on the one hand or a charismatic leader on the other; they don’t even have a father-President Carter!-to kill or a father to tell them to kill the Jew; they have no Jew; they are libidinally driven to mass surrender without anything to surrender to; they don’t even believe in money or in science, or those beliefs are insufficient; their country has fought and lost its last real war; in a word, they are overfed; in a word, they are starving.”



There are times I loved the writing. Lerner’s use of words is brilliant and I found myself highlighting sentences and paragraphs here and there. On the other hand, as far as a plot, I still am not sure of the point. It seems Lerner is trying to explain how two boys from the same school take such widely divergent paths and places far too much power in a cue ball.

We cannot know how Darren became Darren with so little understanding of his life. People don’t become bigots because they are developmentally disabled or bullied. People are more complex than Lerner is letting them be. The question of what makes toxic masculinity and the bully culture is too complex to answer with short interstitial narratives from a guy who could not tell you how he came to believe what he believes. In fact, the most useful insight into the rise of Trump came from Jane, Adam’s mother, who recalls a woman angry about Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church, not because she was embarrassed by their homophobia, but because their blatant homophobia made people talk about homosexuality which she preferred in the closet and under the rug.

I received an e-galley of The Topeka School from the publisher through NetGalley.

The Topeka School at Farrah, Straus, and Giroux, Macmillan
Ben Lerner faculty page

My Thoughts: I don’t usually review a book I didn’t finish, but I did read 55% of The Topeka School and I think that’s enough to share a few thoughts on it. I really wanted to like this story of a family steeped in psychiatry, with a son moving toward manhood. The story started out strong with a really sort of odd opening that completely drew me in and left me wanting more. From there, things went down hill. It felt like Ben Lerner had a lot of things he wanted to write about and he tried hard to squeeze it all into a single story. Paragraphs became overly long and rambling. The story took cake walks, veering off into sub-plots that had little to do with what (I think) was the heart of the story. Everyone in the story seemed to have their own thing going on, leading to a lack of any cohesive storyline. The more I read, the less I cared until I finally could go no further.

Note: I received a copy of this book from Farrar, Straus and Giroux (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review.

Dang. This book. Want to dive deep into the problems plaguing white men and boys today? This is it! Toxic masculinity and development, marital transgressions, trolls and loners... this book has got you covered. I was kind of appalled by a lot of it, but in a juicy can't-stop-reading way, but that's Ben Lerner for you.

Adam Gordon is about finishing highschool, the only thing left to do are the final competitions in debating where he is a master and expected to become national champion. His parents have never paid much attention to this, even though they are psychoanalysts, really paying attention to the other family members seems to be something they cannot master. They are too much occupied with themselves, Adam‘s mother Jane who suffers from the lack of professional recognition, or their patients, Adam‘s father Jonathan who works with aggressive teenagers.

I really adore Ben Lerner‘s style of writing, he is one of those contemporary storytellers I appreciate most, yet I struggle with bringing his latest novel to the point. It is narrated from three different points of views, his parents are talking in first person to the reader directly and Adam‘s story is narrated by a third person narrator. Between the chapters, the story of Darren, a teenager whi struggels mentally, is told. Even after having finished I am not sure what to make of this. Is this meant to underline the parents‘ egocentristic view which keeps them at a certain distance from their son? I do not know.

Somehow the novel is a bit ecelctic, many pondering-worth topics are addressed, like e.g. how to cope with micro-aggressions and anxieties, what you remember and what your brain makes of these memories, talking to an analyst vs. talking to a friend, typical coming-of-age problems, feminism is a huge topic for Jane since she blames the lack of professional recognition mainly to the fact that she is a woman (which might well be the case).

After all, maybe it is all about language and how dominance is expressed with words. For the male characters, they often babble without providing any serious content, but nevertheless, they dominate the discourse. Women like Jane are forced to rather retreat into themselves and talk to a fictitious reader or themselves, it is not for them to speak up in public. A lot of food for thought and this toxic masculinity which is addressed surely is one of the hottest topics in 2019.