Jonathan Lethem's The Arrest is an odd take on a muted post-apocalyptic future after The Arrest, an extended event during which all tech, from TV to the internet to cell phones, stop working. The protagonist, Alexander "Sandy" Dupless is left stranded (vehicles using conventional fuel don't work either) up in New England near his sister, Maddy Duplessis, and her organic farm commune (which is a generous term for it, given how feudal it all seems) in Maine. At one time, before The Arrest, Sandy and his former roommate from Yale, Peter Todbaum, we're living out in Hollywood, trying to write the greatest post-apocalyptic dystopian screenplay ever. A brief encounter between Todbaum and Maddy seems to have set off a series of changes and ultimately Sandy, who was deeply unsettled by his sister's involvement with Todbaum, has landed in Maine, working as a journeyman (think more like a UPS delivery guy, delivering food, news, and more) in their small community which tries to thrive despite the titular Arrest. And it was all going along swimmingly, for the most part, until Todbaum shows up in a vehicle called The Blue Streak (think a nuclear-powered tank) asking for Sandy and Maddy and setting off a fatal chain of events.

There are elements of this story, including its gentle apocalypse that has ended modern life as we know it, that offer great bones for a story. The characters here left me cold sadly, and I honestly struggled to finish the novel, finally buying the audiobook to do so. Lethem's prose is always sharp-edged and crisp, but sometimes I just have difficulty feeling engaged with his characters. I didn't really like anyone in the novel other than the elusive secondary character Drenka. That lack of caring made it hard for me to care about what would happen to the principal characters and the novel's outcome.

The audiobook is nicely narrated by Robert Fass.

I received a digital review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I am very happy to be done reading this book. I enjoyed Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn but this was absolutely nothing like that.

Interesting concept, but I need to either care about the plot OR care about the characters OR enjoy the writing (if not a combo of the three) and none of that was achieved here. Wouldn't recommend unless you just want to read all of Lethem's works or something like that.

The Arrest is humorous and whimsical, with beautiful descriptions and a unique storyline. The way the story is structured made it a quick read, but the characters continued to live on in my head even after I had put the book down. Though difficult to like, the main character is authentically flawed, and I felt fully invested in his plight. The author's method of interspersing flashbacks with present events infuses the plot with a mysterious, inexplicable atmosphere that nudges the reader towards considering the merits and the pitfalls of the lives we currently lead. Overall, this is a refreshing take on post-apocalyptic storytelling that I highly recommend!

Despite being a fan and promoter of Mr. Lethem's work since GUN, WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC I found THE ARREST to be very disappointing and would likely not have finished reading it if not for my commitment to NETGALLEY. The book reads like a graphic novel without the graphics with intermittent catalogs of pop culture or literary references without context. A writer who achieved true excellence with MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN and FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE seems to have arrested his own development as a novelist as he has become an engaging pundit of popular culture. His proximity to Hollywood has not served him well here. Thanks for the reading material.

The Arrest caused the world’s power grid to cease. No more cell phones, computers, cars, or even planes. It is 1700 again.

When everything stops working, Journeyman and his sister Maddy get stranded at her organic farm in Maine. Little do they know, but their life is about to be upended by Journeyman’s former writing partner, but now super-rich movie mogul, Todbaum. He arrives from Malibu driving a $14 million nuclear-powered car/tank called the Blue Streak.

I loved Motherless Brooklyn so I had to read the latest book by its author. While you have to give the author credit for versatility, I didn’t enjoy The Arrest nearly as much. The writing style was very well done. However, the plot meandered around quite a bit. Usually in literary fiction, there is an overarching point. I didn’t see it in this book at all. Appreciate electricity? Don’t buy all your books as ebooks? I truly don’t know.

Overall, I rate this book at 3 stars.

Thanks to Ecco and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

"If Journeyman was an expert in one thing, it was postapocalyptic and dystopian stories. ...
'You know what's great about this shit, don't you? ... It's always better, not worse. ... Whatever fucked-up allegorical hellscape or dire prison block for the human soul they're working through, the particulars don't matter. They want to live there, you can feel it. The characters in the book, they're always justified, set on a road.'"

Maybe losing it all isn't the worst thing that could happen. Maybe we can continue our lives, different sure, but continued. Maybe most of us would find a place where we could be comfortable. Maybe the worst would be someone who wants to blow it all up. What would you do to stop that person?

Intelligent, thought-provoking, a gem of a read. Confusing, frustrating, maddening also. Read it and make your own decisions. This isn't going to be for every reader and that's the point.

Obla di obla da.

I love everything about Jonathan Lethem's The Arrest, and I'm not even a fan of the post apocalyptic and dystopian genre. Lethem is known for his genre-bending and -blending, and The Arrest is like nothing I've ever read before; there are decades of buildup to scenes and storyline, there is intrigue and mystery, witty repartee, and undeniable substance. His characters are so realistically damaged, the settings so crystalized, the writing incredibly transportive and tight. Alexander "Sandy" aka "Journeyman" Duplessis is as lost as his younger sister Madeleine "Maddy" Duplessis is stalwart. The Peter Todbaum character that both comes between and ties them, arrives in a "nuclear-fueled, espresso-making guillotine" of a supercar, hastening an epic confrontation.

The brilliance of concepts like The Arrest and Time Averaging absolutely amazed me, and I loved the use of $5 words like saturnine, tesseract, prodrome and coaming. My notes gush praise for this kind of genius: "How did one human undesolate another?" or the outrageous skill applied in pointing out a non sequitur one-third of the way in as a plot device.

The only word I disagreed with in the whole book is at Loc 417 "And why shouldn't the two young writers want a tall attractive sister to accompany them into the West Hollywood nightlife, to make them appear less like losers?" Seems to me that last word could've been lovers.

Let me begin by noting that Jonathan Lethem is one of my favorite living American writers. (I have a lot of favorite dead American writers.) Lethem’s stylistic flexibility and off-kilter imagination always astonish me. He has written genre novels and literary novels, has edited Philip K. Dick for the Library of America, penned essays, criticism, and short stories: he does it all. My favorite American novel is Hawthorne’s "The Blithedale Romance," based on his experiences at a utopian communal farm. Lethem is getting closer to my Blithedale ideal with a post-apocalyptic farming collective in his new novel, "The Arrest."

"The Arrest" is a very odd book, a kind of dystopian comedy that unfolds after technology dies.

Certainly things are very bleak on Earth; I don’t mean to imply the future is actually funny. One day, without warning, everything stops working. No TV, no internet, no phones: “the death of screens.” No cars, no planes, no trains, just horses and bicycles for transportation. A lot of attention is paid to the growing of food and cooking.

The hero, Journeyman, a former Hollywood writer and script-doctor named Sandy Duplessis, has no special skills in this new world. When the Arrest happened, he was lucky to be visiting his sister Maddie, the lesbian founder of a farming collective. She tried to teach him how to find mushrooms, but he flunks that course. He is an unskilled worker who now helps the butcher kill ducks, and he also delivers food on a bicycle.

We know that something will happen in this relatively peaceful post-apocalyptic community. And so one day, when an armored supercar appears, powered by nuclear energy and driven by Journeyman’s former business partner, Todbaum (tod means “death” in German), everyone is wary. Todbaum and Sandy worked for years on a movie script about an apocalypse, and, at Maddie’s suggestion, added scenes in the pre-apocalyptic world. Maddie and Todbaum are natural enemies: Maddie e is productive, Todbaum destructive.

Everyone comes to see Todbaum’s vehicle, and he begins to tell nightly stories around the campfire of his adventures traveling across country in the Blue Streak (his car). Some tales are gory, some are simply absurd. He also gives them espresso (yes, he actually has a never-ending supply of espresso in the super-car).

His presence shakes up the community. There is some resentment. There are threats of violence. How can the peace be kept? The solution is so bizarre and just plain weird that I was awed–but not entirely in a good way!

Very enjoyable and eerie. My only complaint: the chapters are too short. They do seem to reflect the monotony of the days, though. Not much happens in a single episode.

Anyway, in our present state of apocalypse, I was happy to read a not-too-threatening dystopian novel. Not Lethem’s best, but a good light read for lockdown (if it comes to that). An entertainment that won’t scare you out of your mind like John Christopher’s The Death of Grass.

Strange story with characters that had unknown motivation and were hard to relate to. Action is limited. I quite possibly missed the whole point.

Thanks to HarperCollins and NetGalley for the ARC to read and review.

It's a new Jonathan Lethem. I don't know if this was good, bad or just boring.

What would happen is all transportation stopped working. No cars, no planes.

Lethem is a talented writer, obviously. This book get buried in words and...plot. I didn't hate this. I also didn't enjoy it.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review.

Thanks to HarperCollins and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.

Jonathan Lethem sums up his own book early on where our narrator tells us that maybe nothing is happening.

And that's not wrong. The fact that this is described as a post apocalyptic work of fiction starts to feel like a lie.

Sure he tells us that all of these electronic devices stopped working, but to me it didn't feel like it had any ultimate weight or point besides the author wanting this to be dystopian.

Sure he tells us about this vehicle called the Blue Streak that runs on nuclear power, but why did it need to be that?

Sure he tells us that our main character is named Journeyman, but no one else in the story even calls him that name. They just call him Sandy, his real life name. So only the narrator refers to him as that? Why?

I honestly just don't have much else to say. This was just a slog and so boring and so uneventful and so pointless. My recommendation is to go outside and ponder whether or not it's worth reading anymore after dealing with something as banal and up it's own ass as this was.

I wanted to love this but ultimately couldn't get past the first few chapters. I typically love Lethem but the style can be difficult to grasp and I couldn't get into this one. It's a great premise, though it's definitely on the outer edge of science fiction.

Authors in 2020 seem to have the idea of "An Event" happening in the United States, and what might happen after that, on the brain this year. We've already had [book:A Children's Bible|53122391], [book:The Silence|53879204], and [book:Leave the World Behind|50358031] give their take on what that event was and what happens in the direct aftermath, and now The Arrest shows what might happen with a little more remove.

The cover description on the book specifically calls out that it's not meant to be interpreted post-apocalyptically. This isn't the end of the world, but something's definitely happened to the devices. I think Lethem's description of what "The Arrest" is is one of the most poetic passages I've read this year, and satisfied me more than Don DeLillo or Rumaan Alam's descriptions of the inciting incidents. It took me a little bit to get use to the way Jonathan Lethem writes to figure out what was going on and if I liked this - chapters are fairly short, but can be dense if you're not fully paying attention to what characters are doing, since the main character is alternately Journeyman, Sandy, or Alexander Duplessis. The book gives glimpses of who its characters were in the beforetimes and how the "arrest" has changed their world well. I'm not sure I entirely "got" the ending, but this was a nice little diversion into a speculative future.

The Arrest is a post apocolyptic, dystopian tale. The author layers many different plot lines; unfortunately he doesn't always follow his ideas to resolution. What happened at the Starlight Motel? What actually caused the arrest? Who created the Blue Streak? And how? The list goes on.

As the title suggests, the author is deliberately ambiguous as to whether or not the enclave in this story is really a shining tower in a world of darkness or a prison of its own making. I often found that his choice of words did not flow naturally for the author - thus leaving the reader with an uncomfortable reading experience. I found myself bogged down in the verbiage in places.

I found the general idea of this book interesting, but would have reservations about reading more by this author.

First and foremost, the language of this book is cutting and vivid. This book pulls the rare trick of being a dystopia you just want to kick back in. (see: Station Eleven). It answers the question of, what if the main character of a dystopian story isn't an orphaned teen saving the world, but a listless adult who is just doing a menial job? It could have devolved into novel-gazing, but the writing of Lethem keeps the story moving comfortably forward, maybe not propulsively, but pleasantly.

My biggest issue was that Maddy seemed like the most interesting character by far, but we were given almost nothing of her thoughts and motivations. It seemed intentional, but I am not sure it was the correct choice.

Review for publication elsewhere.
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My thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for allowing me to read this e-proof. I was excited to get a chance to read it because I always love to read books that take place in Maine. I live just down the road from a fictional town called ‘Salem’s Lot, which totally creeped me out whenever I read the book. Olive Kittridge lives somewhere here in Maine, too. The Arrest takes place in the fictional town of Tinderwick, located on a peninsula on the Atlantic, a few hours up the coast from where I live. The main character is a man named Alexander Duplessis, aka Sandy, aka Journeyman. Journeyman was friends with a man named Peter Todbaum when they were in college. Then they worked together as writers out on the West Coast, but now Journeyman lives in Tinderwick. There are no roads, no cars, no electricity, no USPS, no courts – all the things we Americans take for granted every day. The town is surrounded by “The Cordon.” It’s pretty much up to everybody to be self-sufficient and everyone tends to look after their neighbors and each has their own job to do. Journeyman's job is delivering food on his bicycle. One day this giant vehicle run by nuclear energy shows up in town and the driver is none other than Journeyman’s old friend, Peter Todbaum. Todbaum becomes very popular because he tells stories and has espresso. He’s no longer Journeyman’s friend, though. Eventually the town becomes wary of Todbaum and take matters into their own hands when members of The Cordon decide they want Todbaum’s vehicle. This is the only book I’ve ever read by Mr. Lethem and I found his writing to be good, but there wasn’t a heck of a lot of action in the book until the end. My main problem with this story is that I just didn’t understand it. After finishing the story, I felt the same way I did after watching the movie, Cloud Atlas - I just didn’t get it. There weren’t a lot of characters, but the only ones I had any kind of opinion about were Journeyman and Drenka, both of whom I liked. I couldn’t relate to anyone else and I could never figure out what Jerome Kormentz’s place was in the story. I didn’t dislike or like this story and I actually spent a lot of time thinking about it, just trying to figure out what it was supposed to be about.

It goes without saying that Jonathan Lethem is a talented author. This latest from him is without a doubt imaginative and odd, like most of his work.

The Arrest takes place in a near future in which electricity stops working. Transportation is no more. There is now way for individuals around the world to communicate, beyond seeing each other face to face.

After this tragic turn of events, Sandy Duplessis, who now calls himself the Journeyman, is living in rural Maine. His life, now simple, involves delivering food grown by his sister and assisting the butcher. But before The Arrest happened, he was a screenwriter living in Los Angeles, working with a producer named Peter Todbaum, who is a bit of a morally questionable force of nature.

Now, after The Arrest, Todbaum resurfaces in his life -- for better or worse -- after having driven clear across the country in a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. While those in Sandy’s community are awed by this machine -- a rare vehicle in a future in which they no longer exist, Sandy and his sister begin to question Todbaum’s motives for being there.

I always appreciate a writer who has the capacity to imagine a world unlike our own. I did find the backstory of Todbaum and Sandy interesting, as well as their strange reunification, but I felt myself distracted by what seemed to me like too much description of this semi-dystopian future.
If there was going to be so much space and time dedicated to describing the world, I wanted for a more boldly painted dystopia. There’s some interesting themes clearly being explored here through Todbaum, his contraption and people’s reactions to him, but I kept feeling lost in lengthy descriptions of the land, the new lifestyle in this area of Maine and some of the supporting characters.

Overall, I was unable to push through and finish this, and I stopped past the midpoint. At some point, I may go back and finish it, and I will definitely continue to read Lethem’s work. This one, perhaps, just wasn’t for me.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC!

A world after everything, mechanical or electronic, stops working. No cars, no electricity, no phones, and no formal government after an unexplained Arrest sweeps the nation (the continent? the world?) We only know what the characters know and that's near to nothing. All but Todbaum, an old friend of Journeyman, who comes to town, in a working super car, with stories from the outside world and how they are dealing with the Arrest. But are these stories true? Embellished? Can they trust this new-comer? Only time will tell and I will tell you now, it took a looooong time to get there. This book gives a whole new definition to "slow-burn", I had to take several breaks from this one and almost regret spending the time to push through. But finally, the story is finished and I can look back with some appreciation for the work the author put into creating this story for us to read, which overall was hard to get through but also had great writing and story telling

There were some humorous parts of the book, and the sparse language drew me in. But ultimately, a postapocalyptic story, in which the apocalypse is never explained and the main character is feckless, does not appeal right now. I was intrigued by Maddie and confused by her relationships with her brother and with the Blue Streak guy. I wonder what the book would have been like if she had been the main character. The whole metafiction, Maddie-and-Blue-Streak-guy-and-Journeyman-already-wrote-this-story thing didn't do it for me either.