At the library where I work, there are quite a few patrons who enjoy a sub-genre called "cozy mystery," where somebody usually gets murdered, but other than the murder, everything is very pleasant and nice. With "The Arrest," Jonathan Lethem has written a sort of cozy post-apocalyptic novel. The world has ended, but other than that, everything is pretty much just fine. People are unhappy, but they seem to be unhappy in the familiar 21st century ways. The town therapist is kept very busy, and he accepts payment in the form of fresh produce and baked goods.

The book is set amid a community of organic farmers in Maine who, conveniently, already have most of the agricultural and survival skills they need in order to survive in relative comfort when guns, fossil fuels, computers and other advanced technologies mysteriously stop functioning. This novel is witty, erudite and at times thought-provoking, but it is also somewhat frustrating.

Some readers might find it altogether unrewarding. Perhaps our desire for easy gratification is being intentionally frustrated, given that two of the central characters are disillusioned and sociopathic (respectively) TV/movie makers.

All four of the female characters in the book are nearly interchangeable in their inscrutability, and all are pretty shallowly drawn, without much insight into their interiority. One of the women is initially referred to as "the woman in the library," and another, who we only hear about second-hand, is referred to as "Pittsburg," which is not her name. This, I think, is a weakness of the book any way you look at it. To be fair to Lethem, we're not invited to get close to the male characters either. The only characters we get to spend much time with are the protagonist, Sandy Duplessis, and his friend/nemesis, the repellent Peter Todbaum.

Jonathan Lethem is a wonderfully skillful writer, and this book is engaging enough on the sentence and paragraph level that I kept reading and finished it with ease. But if you start this book with the expectations of the typical science fiction reader, you will have to either adjust, give up, or risk disappointment. Several plot strands that seem like they might "pay off" in the usual science-fictional ways end up not doing so. Instead, rather like "The Pillow Book" of Sei Shonagon (a recurring literary reference in this novel), they just drift away on the wind.

Interesting enough, but chapters read as ideas or concepts and not a finished product. Also unclear why the characters would resonate with a reader.

Thanks to Netgalley and Ecco for an early ebook. You really never know what to expect from Jonathan Lethem. Has tastes seem to run through so many genres, but you know the stories are going to be well thought out and that there will be fantastic characters delivering great dialogue. The Arrest is the term for when the world, in the very near future, grinds to a complete halt as every machine and device that we so rely on ceases to function. This sends people to work the land and trade for what they need with no idea what is happening beyond where they are. The book focuses on an extended community in rural Maine where Sandy Duplessis, self nicknamed Journeyman, finds himself with the job of deliveryman, working for his sister Maddy, a farmer, and others. Before the arrest, Sandy was a very successful script doctor in Hollywood, working for his former college roommate, Peter Todbaum, who had grown into a powerful producer. In fact, Peter has become so rich that while all his friends were buying islands and safe rooms for the end of the world, Peter had a supercar built that runs on a nuclear reactor and can tunnel through anything. Now that the end has come, Peter has driven across the country to join Sandy in Maine, which quickly throws off the balance of this community, and also Maddy hates Peter. A fun, smart and constantly surprising book.

There's a very interesting premise at work in THE ARREST, and I was excited to see how it would play out. Unfortunately for me, Lethem's prose made reading this an absolute chore. I'd be charmed by one turn of phrase, and then have to fight through a tangled paragraph of unnecessary simile and whimsy.

I love some good word play, and finding an author with a distinct, recognizable voice is a true joy as a reader. But Lethem seems too in love with this voice, too focused on layering quirky observation on top of quirky characters.

I didn't want to spend time with any of these people, and I didn't want to spend time in this world. It just wore me out.

I imagine this is one of those books that will knock the socks off some, and completely turn off others. Sadly, I'm in the latter camp. YMMV.

The book description was very interesting. What would happen if our cars, airplanes computers etc. stop working. I didn't finish this book. I got lost in the language and the description. It reminded me of some of the less popular Dean Koontz books that describe every detail. I don't enjoy exposition, I want the story to move along. I give this book 1 star because I didn't finish it.

An interesting read during an interesting time in our world. The Arrest is a time when everything in the world just stopped working. We never really learn why this happened just that it did. I was really interested in this event, and would have liked to hear more about it.
We pick up in a new "society" in New England with a guard group and a farming self sustaining group. They seem to have things pretty worked out amongst themselves. Until an old friend shows up in what he calls "The Blue Streak". This is his nuclear powered vehicle that is almost sci fi in nature with its' numerous details.
The entry of this vehicle and its' occupant causes quite a stir, and all sorts of ripple effects occur.
This was a quick read, definitely futuristic in nature, but eerily mirroring some parts of our current world.
I enjoyed it, but it was a little lacking in some background details and information to make me fall in absolute love with it.

Thank you NetGalley for the free ARC. Interesting turn on dystopia in this novel by Lethem when the arrest causes all electronics to fail and the current infrastructure of the US falls apart. Journeyman is the local butcher and is surprised by a visit from his friend, who comes driving up in a steampunk nuclear train-car. It feels a little like the book was designed around the vehicle.

Jonathan Lethem . I fell in love with him and with Motherless Brooklyn in 1999, Fortress of Solitude in 2003. Those books are well worth reading in the context of current events and issues. Later works veered into the odd fantasy/science fiction realm. That is usually a land I love. but the "literariness" of the first books didn't translate well for me into genre fiction. But, glory be, here comes The Arrest which combines both in a way that is both clever and enjoyable in a weird way and is not door stop size, In fact I am going to take a wild guess and suggest Lethem was inspired by a classic sci-fi short story by master Frederic Brown, The Waveries, read for you here.here on You Tube. https://youtu.be/oVlPHASqRf8

Lethem has been around a while and written quite a bit, but this is my first book of his. This has good pacing, and a pretty realistic premise. I enjoyed the humor and writing style, and I stayed mostly engaged. This is a quick and satisfying read.

Thanks very much for the ARC for review!!

Jonathan Lethem is as master of sly comedy, unreliable narrators, and clever twists and turns. All of these are on display in his excellent new novel, The Arrest. In this somewhat tongue-in-cheek dystopian story, the reader is introduced to several small communities surviving in Maine after a never-fully-explained event that has stopped the world, or at least mechanical parts of it. The protagonist, whose life has been defined by following and supporting others, finds himself in an awkward position when an old friend shows up in a supercar--a machine that has supposedly made it to Maine from California, protecting its driver along the way. But the old friend brings trouble, and as the various communities and subgroups of the area jostle and fight over the use of the car, the protagonist finds himself a key gear in a giant clockwork that moves around him, culminating with a beautifully plotted and executed denouement. Lots of fun, wonderfully written, and perhaps the perfect dystopian novel for right now.

Beautiful cover and writing. While this isn't typically my kind of story, I can appreciate the thought behind it. Creepy to read during the quarantine!

It's the summer of 2020, I don't need to read a novel about a dystopian world with an uncertain future, I can turn on CNN, or watch a city council meeting about masks. I read this book anyway, because Jonathan Lethem's name is on it (Well, he wrote it. If you wrote his name on 50 Shades of Grey, I probably wouldn't read it.) (No offense 50 Shades fans.) and I was not disappointed.

Something happened to turn off all electrical equipment and break almost all appliances. We don't know what the event was. We just know that Sandy Duplessis used to be a script doctor, and now he's a butcher's assistant/delivery person living in his sister's commune-like town in rural Maine. We go back and forth from his current arrested circumstances to his life in Hollywood working for Peter Todbaum. Well, they started as colleagues, then Peter made it huge and Sandy just worked for him. Suddenly in the present Todbaum shows up in town with a nuclear powered impossible super car and things go... well. They go somewhere.

Lethem's writing style is always so easy to jump in and savor the words. The characters are bright and fun to investigate. He has an ability to create a full picture of a character with very few words, and that sticks with you each time the character returns. I liked the meta analysis of dystopian movie/literature where Todbaum says authors who create these worlds want to live there. And, there's something to be said for that I think Lethem did create a world people would want to live in, but he made it clear it wasn't a happy one in spite of some really dank buds - “We lost people. Every one of us lost someone we loved.”

The structure of the story itself was interesting. Jumping from after The Arrest to before filled some holes in information, while leaving plenty open to speculate. But, even of the speculation, like what happened to cause the Arrest? The book doesn't spend a lot of time caring about that. And, therefore, neither did I. Something happened. It doesn't matter what. Is what the characters seemed to think, as well as this reader.

Lethem's style, in this novel at least, made for a quick read. The chapters were short, and I was always eager to read the next one to see what happened next. I enjoyed the world and characters he created. Some of them stuck with me well after I stopped reading the book.

Thanks to Netgalley for supplying a copy of this book. It didn't affect my review.

I always am excited by a new Lethem novel, as he never writes the same book twice, and the latest is a real thrill. It's quirky, and funny, and so on point for our current times. He really is one of the greats of our time, and this latest is destined for the lists.

The world as we know it ends. For no particular reason, or maybe all of them, everything just stops. In Jonathan Lethem's The Arrest, the why of it is hardly the point. The point is that our world shrinks. Way, way down, to a tiny little sliver of its former glory. Yet, still, those parts of your life you'd rather forget can follow you anywhere. Sometimes, literally. Like tracking you down in a nuclear powered, tunnel boring supercar from coast to coast.

The Arrest has the feel of a dream. A protagonist, Journeyman, AKA Sandy, AKA Alexander Duplessis, who, timid and introverted, seems perpetually one step behind, out of the loop, not quite in control of his own destiny. Journeyman has a problem in the form of his irksome, manipulative, slightly demented and megolomaniac yet charismatic frenemy, Peter Todbaum. It's a weird relationship, this. Like a shark and remora, only in reverse. Peter's presence threatens to turn his nice, sleepy post-apocalyptic paradise into a real you-know-what show.

Lethem's prose is pithy, evocative and genuine, fantastically capturing the nuances of Journeymen's fraught, unbalanced relationships with his friend and his sister. A real pleasure. Full of a foreboding sense of a less than sublime past about to catch up with the here and now, a balance and serenity about to be shattered. Waiting for true intentions to be revealed and the other shoe to drop. Will there be war? A personal reckoning? Maybe some of both.

If you mixed a Jasper Fforde novel with When Androids Dream of Electric sheep, perhaps. It was enjoyable, though I’d like it even more if I wasn’t living in a dystopian future. It was a fast, enjoyable read and in a world where it didn’t seem like a possible future. I would have loved it.

Thanks to NetGalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.