Castle: A Novel - Hardcover

Lennon, J. Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555975224 ISBN 13: 9781555975227

Publisher: Graywolf Press, 2009

Synopsis

Castle by J. Robert Lennon is a mesmerizing novel about memory, guilt, power, and violence

In the late winter of 2006, I returned to my home town and bought 612 acres of land on the far western edge of the county." So begins, innocuously enough, J. Robert Lennon's gripping, spooky, and brilliant new novel. Unforthcoming, formal, and more than a little defensive in his encounters with curious locals, Eric Loesch starts renovating a run-down house in the small, upstate New York town of his childhood. When he inspects the title to the property, however, he discovers a chunk of land in the middle of his woods that he does not own. What's more, the name of the owner is blacked out.

Loesch sets out to explore the forbidding and almost impenetrable forest―lifeless, it seems, but for a bewitching white deer―that is the site of an eighteenth-century Indian massacre. But this peculiar adventure story has much to do with America's current military misadventures―and Loesch's secrets come to mirror the American psyche in a paranoid age. The answer to what―and who―might lie at the heart of Loesch's property stands at the center of this daring and riveting novel from the author whose writing, according to Ann Patchett, "contains enough electricity to light up the country.""

About this title

About the Author:

J. Robert Lennon is the author of five novels, including Mailman and The Light of Falling Stars. His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Harper's, Playboy, and The New Yorker. He lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife and two sons.

From Booklist:

Returning to his hometown in upstate New York, Eric Loesch buys a large tract of forested land and the rundown house upon it. Emotionally constricted and painfully awkward in his dealings with locals, he is beset by strange feelings of fear and déjà vu as he first restores the house and then explores the land. Suspense mounts as he makes one strange discovery after another—among them that he is not alone—until a penultimate event unleashes a flood of memories and the novelist’s true agenda. In Mailman (2003), Lennon created an unforgettable, outsider protagonist, and Loesch is just as memorably crafted. What works less well here is the story’s construction: what begins as a literary suspense novel with an almost mystical atmosphere is suddenly, violently grounded in current events. Readers’ willingness to follow the surprising shift will depend on their willingness to embrace unconventional narrative. However admirable, and whether or not intentionally, Lennon’s overt message breaks the spell cast by his art. He’s still a terrific talent, but Castle isn’t as successful as his previous works. --Keir Graff

About this edition

• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1555975224
• ISBN 13: 9781555975227
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224