Amnesia Moon

Amnesia Moon is a wacky and sometimes incomprehensible tale of a post-apocalyptic America in which no one can agree exactly what caused the collapse of civilization. For some, it was nuclear war; for others, it was aliens; and for one town, it was a green mist that blinded the populace. The hero, alternately named Everett Moon or Chaos, wanders through these places, journeying from one surreal post-apocalyptic community to the next. There is only one constant: Some people have the power to control others’ dreams or even their waking thoughts, and those people are in charge wherever Chaos goes. In fact, Chaos is a dreamer himself, and his traveling companion is a young mutant girl covered with fur whom he may actually have dreamed up. show more

We never find out exactly what happened to this world, but the story is in the journey, so we don’t really care. Lethem’s unique brand of storytelling shines in this early novel of his. show less

This road story iss part Kafka and part P K Dick and all Jonathan Lethem. A rollicking narrative of a future that is both nightmarish and entertaining. It is a world where the truth of everything is elusive at best.

Not on a par with Gun, With Occasional Music or Motherless Brooklyn for me, but still a fun, imaginative and quick read. The pacing seemed a bit off - the first 3/4 of it was a meandering road trip, while last quarter brought in a slew of new people and plots, which made the ending feel rushed.

Jonathon Lethem’s second novel, Amnesia Moon, centres around a man named Chaos living in the post-apocalyptic town of Hatfork, Wyoming. The bombs have fallen, society has crumbled, the sky is tinted with radioactivity and the mutated townsfolk are reliant on a tyrant named Kellogg for their food. Less than 30 pages into the book, after making him admit that he can’t remember how long ago the bombs fell or what he was doing when they did, Kellogg convinces Chaos that the truth of their world is “a little more complicated,” and Chaos sets out on a post-apocalyptic roadtrip to uncover the truth.

Lethem’s first novel, Gun With Occasional Music, felt like a neat concept for a short story that had been stretched out into a novel. show more Amnesia Moon feels more like a collection of short stories patched together to make an extremely surreal novel, and I was unsurprised to learn, after finishing it, that this is precisely the case. Chaos travels across an America devastated by wildly different apocalyptic events – everybody agrees something bad has happened, but it appears to be different everywhere he goes. The only unifying element is that each location is dominated by a “dreamer,” somebody forcing their version of reality upon others. The different locales are all drawn from various unpublished short stories Lethem had written.

This is a lazy way to write a novel, but I found Amnesia Moon readable enough, and it has a particularly good ending which suggests that one of the more disturbing realities is in fact the truth. It deals quite a lot with dreams and memories and amnesia, which I normally find tedious, but Lethem is a skillful enough writer that Amnesia Moon is rarely tiresome. I didn’t see much point to it, as a novel, but he’s a good writer and I’ll keep reading him. I look forward to when I get to the point in his career when he’s actually writing novels rather than short stories in disguise. show less

Interesting take on the post-Apocalypse/mind-bending reality genre, where reality becomes literally subjective. Sometimes gets a little too obtuse, but there’s some really good moments and ideas. Letham’s got a weird imagination, as seen in another book of his I read awhile back, Gun, With Occasional Music. Possibly not for everyone, but if you like PK Dick, you should try one of these.

Chaos, also known as Moon, lives in a post-apocalyptic America, or perhaps some other reality. Reality, however, is shaped by dreamers, and Chaos is a latent dreamer. He sets out on a quest to find a better way to live seeking not only truth but also, as it turns out, community and family.

One way to read the book is as an analogy about postmodern society. In this view, reality is created by us, that is by social consensus. This certainly includes dysfunctional aspects. In the book, the dysfunctional aspects dominate, e.g. a broken down post-apocalyptic setting, a green fog, and a TV celebrity centric society. This is particularly frustrating, since better options exist, such as represented by the futuristic cars.

A thought-provoking, show more entertaining read. show less

This book paints a very strange, surreal landscape of post-apocalyptic America. I loved the journey itself, and some parts had me twisting my mind. But the entire book I though I was being taken towards some sort of realization or explanation that never came, making it a bit of a disappointment.