The arrest : a novel

Title:

Author:

Summary:

Before the Arrest, Sandy Duplessis had a reasonably good life as a screenwriter in L.A. An old college friend and writing partner, the charismatic and malicious Peter Todbaum, had become one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. That didn't hurt. Now, post-Arrest, nothing is what it was. Sandy, who calls himself Journeyman, has landed in rural Maine. There he assists the butcher and delivers the food grown by his sister, Maddy, at her organic farm. But then Todbaum shows up in an extraordinary vehicle: a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. Todbaum has spent the Arrest smashing his way across a fragmented and phantasmagorical United States, trailing enmities all the way. Plopping back into the siblings' life with his usual odious panache, his motives are entirely unclear.

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

307 pages ; 24 cm

Genre:

Dystopian fiction.

Subject Term:

Siblings -- Fiction.

Screenwriters -- Fiction.

Motion picture authorship -- Fiction.

Motion picture industry -- Fiction.

Nuclear propulsion -- Fiction.

Publisher:

Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers,

Publication Date:

2020

ISBN:

9780062938787

Publication Information:

New York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2020]

Call Number:

LETHEM

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003481994	Adult Fiction	LETHEM Jonathan	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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On Order

Summary

From the award-winning author of The Feral Detective and Motherless Brooklyn comes an utterly original post-collapse yarn about two siblings, the man that came between them, and a nuclear-powered super car.

The Arrest isn't post-apocalypse. It isn't a dystopia. It isn't a utopia. It's just what happens when much of what we take for granted--cars, guns, computers, and airplanes, for starters--quits working. . . .

Now, post-Arrest, nothing is what it was. Sandy, who calls himself Journeyman, has landed in rural Maine. There he assists the butcher and delivers the food grown by his sister, Maddy, at her organic farm. But then Todbaum shows up in an extraordinary vehicle: a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. Todbaum has spent the Arrest smashing his way across a fragmented and phantasmagorical United States, trailing enmities all the way. Plopping back into the siblings' life with his usual odious panache, his motives are entirely unclear. Can it be that Todbaum wants to produce one more extravaganza? Whatever he's up to, it may fall to Journeyman to stop him.

Written with unrepentant joy and shot through with just the right amount of contemporary dread, The Arrest is speculative fiction at its absolute finest.

Author Notes

Jonathan Lethem was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 19, 1964. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music was published in 1994. His other works include As She Climbed across the Table (1997), Amnesia Moon (1995), The Fortress of Solitude (2003), You Don't Love Me Yet (2007), Chronic City (2009), and Dissident Gardens (2013). He won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Motherless Brooklyn (1999). He also writes short stories, comics and essays. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Rolling Stone, Esquire, The New York Times, The Paris Review, McSweeney's and other periodicals and anthologies.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Lethem (The Feral Detective) returns with a lukewarm tale of an apocalypse set in the very near future. Sandy Duplessis worked as a screenwriter in Los Angeles with his friend Peter Todbaum. Then came the Arrest, an unexplained event that caused computers and other technology to stop working and reduced everyone to locavores. In the aftermath, Sandy, who calls himself Journeyman, ends up in rural Maine working as a butcher and delivering food grown by his sister, Maddy. When Todbaum shows up and starts pursuing Mandy, their simple life gets complicated. The locals feel threatened by Todbaum's presence, and Sandy, who is unnerved by Todbaum's claim that he predicted the Arrest, wonders if his old friend can be trusted, while Maddy, who begins sleeping with Todbaum, becomes his sole defender. Lethem's prose is as great as ever ("Journeyman was a middle person, a middleman. Always locatable between things, and therefore special witness in both directions, to extremes remote to one another, an empathic broker between irreconcilable poles--or so he flattered himself"), but despite the fine writing, the plot fails to coalesce into something engaging, the Arrest remains murky, and many scenes feel disjointed. Still, the project crackles and hums with witty dialogue and engaging ideas. While it's not entirely satisfying, Lethem's fans won't mind. (Nov.)

Library Journal Review

Protean award winner Lethem here conducts us through the Arrest, a weirdly undefinable time when everything from computers to guns have stopped working. Screenwriter Sandy Duplessis, who has retreated to Maine to help his organic farmer sister, suddenly finds himself playing host to old writing partner Peter Todbaum, who arrives from Hollywood with unclear intentions and a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. With a 125,000-copy first printing.