Girl in Landscape

This was my introduction to Jonathan Lethem, and wow, I think I'm hooked already. Full disclosure: I'm a big fan of Philip K. Dick, and I know Lethem is as well.

Girl in Landscape reminded me a lot of PKD's novel Martian Time-Slip as far as the setting with the good-natured native population being disrespected and subjugated while the handful of colonizers meddle with things they obviously don't understand. But the PKD novel lacked the clear, consistent point of view that we have here with the titular "girl." They're two very different books, obviously, but it was interesting to compare them in my head as I went along.

I absolutely loved the concept of the "household deer" presented here. Without giving too much away, that's what made it show more "dreampunk" for me. And as a PKD fan, I really enjoyed the echos of "Zebra," which was part of the author's bizarre real-life experiences, not so much from his fiction.

I'd recommend this to fans of Philip K. Dick or other authors of classic pastoral SF like Clifford Simak, James Tiptree Jr., or Theodore Sturgeon. It had a throwback feel to it, not because the tech was old-fashioned at all, simply because the story takes place in a small frontier town, something you don't see much of on Earth these days. show less

After her mother dies of a brain tumor, 13-year-old Pella and her family emigrate from a nearly uninhabitable future Earth to a colony on the planet of the Arch-Builders in this coming-of-age story.

As is typical of many of his literary science fiction novels, Jonathan Lethem is most interested in placing his characters, and his readers, in a bizarre environment and watching how they adapt. In this case, the environment is an alien planet, once the home of an advanced civilization that has now been abandoned and left in ruins by all but a few of its original inhabitants. The aliens are called the Arch-builders because they left immense, now crumbling arches of unknown purpose all over the desert-like landscape. While most of the human show more colonists take pills to prevent contracting the alien viruses, Pella and her brothers do not, and this leads to her becoming strangely integrated with the planet and its alien life, just as she enters adolescence. She finds that she is able to mentally inhabit the bodies of the household deer -- small, unsatisfactorily described creatures that go everywhere and, apparently, observe everything that happens within the small human community. In this way, she witnesses the animosity and violence displayed toward the aliens, particularly by larger-than-life Efram Nugent, the informal leader of the colony.

This novel quietly grew on me. As Pella becomes more integrated with the life of the Arch-builders' planet, she adapts herself to living there in a way that the adults in her community cannot. She and many of the other children become something new. Lethem depicts this transformation slowly, gradually and subtly. At the same time, he unravels a sinister plot of conflict between Nugent, his fellow colonists and the Arch-builders that shares tropes with an old-fashioned Western. There is a lot going on under the surface of this novel, and I think it would benefit from rereading. Like pretty much any other Lethem novel I have read, it takes the genres we are all so familiar with, and contorts them in exciting new ways. show less

Girl in Landscape has been compared to Nabokov's Lolita which I have never read. As a result of my ignorance I was able to read Girl in Landscape without preconceived notions of what it was about. I'm glad I did. This was great in an extremely strange way. When you first meet old-for-her-age thirteen year old Pella Marsh and her family they are getting ready to go to the beach in what you or I would consider ordinary Brooklyn Heights, New York. Only planet Earth has become a post-apoplectic wasteland where exposure to the sun has become too dangerous without complicated protective gear. It has been decided the Marsh family will leave Earth for the Planet of the Arch-builders. Before they can leave Pella's mother is stricken with a brain show more tumor and quickly dies. Pella, her father and two brothers must travel to the Planet of the Arch-builders without her. This is where things go from odd to downright bizarre. The Planet of the Arch-builders is sparsely populated with a few earthlings, a smattering of Arch-builder aliens and an overabundance of a creature called household deer. Pella's father, a failed politician, has hopes of creating a lawful society on the Planet of the Arch-builders but soon discovers there is an ominous rift between the humans and the aliens. The plot gets darker and darker the deeper into the story you go. show less

It's a terrific coming-of-age story, a terrific space Western, and a really smart reflection on human nature. But you can't quite hold it directly. There is something about it, like the sun out West, where it seems too bright to approach directly. The shattered sense of this future America sets it off on that foot; the scene at the beginning at Coney Island. We almost don't want to look but at the same time feel compelled and so those two impulses meet somewhere just off to the side of the thing itself. That's a masterful achievement if I do say so.

More TK at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/11/21/girl-in-landscape/

Worldbuilding, careful word choice, not over-expository
- Ending a little rushed

This is the third novel I’ve read by Lethem, and I may have to read them all. In this genre (he writes in several), Lethem creates what I’d call literary science fiction. Here (and in [b:Amnesia Moon|32078|Amnesia Moon|Jonathan Lethem|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1168324923s/32078.jpg|2209]) the reader is immediately in medias res with little preliminary exposition and even less later clarification. This works only because Lethem is so skillful at evoking environments and social circumstances through spare, nuanced prose. Though their styles and concerns are not particularly similar, Ursula K. Le Guin’s most recent novels utilize similar techniques. show more The characters know where they are and why it is the way it is; the reader enters almost as an accidental observer, able to see only a small segment of a broader but obscured world.

Girl in Landscape is a bildungsroman in which the main character, the 13-year old Pella Marsh, comes of age on an alien planet, and in doing so, perhaps also signals a greater coming of age for humanity. Lethem deftly captures both adolescent angst and interpersonal complexity and shows the relationship between the qualities of the characters’ psychology and expectations and their ways of seeing and understanding the world they inhabit. The landscape of the title is interior and exterior, physical and social, real and metaphorical. Overtly a tale of misplaced hopes and xenophobia, this is also a narrative of self-discovery and acknowledgement. I only wish the concluding sections had been about 20 pages longer and slightly more archetypal. Still, a terrific read. show less

It's a terrific coming-of-age story, a terrific space Western, and a really smart reflection on human nature. But you can't quite hold it directly. There is something about it, like the sun out West, where it seems too bright to approach directly. The shattered sense of this future America sets it off on that foot; the scene at the beginning at Coney Island. We almost don't want to look but at the same time feel compelled and so those two impulses meet somewhere just off to the side of the thing itself. That's a masterful achievement if I do say so.

More TK at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/11/21/girl-in-landscape/

I want to mention, but skip over aspects of Girl in landscape likely to be covered by other reviewers. It certainly stands out because of its genre bending of Western and Science Fiction tale. It is clearly an homage of sorts to The Searchers. It is other aspects of the book that made it very moving to read.

It should not be overlooked that it is a wonderful coming-of-age story (or bildungsromane to quote the German literary term). Pella Marsh is a young woman forced to grow up far too quickly and reading her story is like being in her head feeling all those raw hormone-infused teenage emotions. Lethem does a wonderful job writing from a young girl’s perspective. Pella is believable if sometimes unpredictable. There is a wonderful show more trope of shifting and metamorphosis, becoming something a bit alien after moving to an alien planet. This fits in well as a metaphor of a child becoming an adult in the jarring manner Pella endures.

The Marsh children’s mother dies suddenly early in the book as a result of a fast metastasizing brain tumor. This could have easily tanked into V. C. Andrews level sentimentality if it not where for Lethem’s own life experiences. His own mother died in the same manner when he was about Pella’s age so this theme arises frequently in his fiction as it did in almost exactly the same manner in The Fortress of Solitude. His personal experience of this pain lends a certain weight of gravitas to Pella’s story.

What struck me most singularly however was Lethem’s near perfect treatment of the group psychology of children and adolescents. The young characters in this book behave so realistically, you may find yourself flashing back to long hot afternoons on the playground. I would recommend reading and discussion of this book to child psychology students, despite its Science Fiction trappings. show less