THE ARREST

Listening to Jonathan Lethem's imaginative new novel is like listening to someone's wild but strangely relevant pandemic dream. Here, technology has been "arrested," along with most of modern civilization. On the coast of Maine, "at the end of land and time," a small agrarian enclave survives in relative peace and tranquility--though not for long. Narrator Robert Fass maintains a necessary balance between the familiar and the fantastic, portraying a cast of characters who range from bedrock New Englander to West Coast transient. The narrative is brisk, compressing 79 chapters into just seven and a half hours. Lethem's prose is, as always, fluent, concise, and studded with sharp images and insights that seem surprisingly apt and prescient of the moment. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: OCTOBER 2020]