Thursday, April 15, 2010

First lines of Girl in a Landscape

Mother and daughter worked together, dressing the two young boys, tucking them into their outfits. The boys slithered under their hands, delighted, impatient, eyes darting sideways. ... The four were going to the beach, so their bodies had to be sealed against the sun.

- Jonathan Lethem, Girl in a Landscape.
Yes, I'm back for more Lethem. This is one of his earlier, scifi-drenched novels, and it should be quite fun. More fun, I hope, then the relentlessly grim and sordid Going Native which was relentlessly depressing in it's depiction of simply abbhorant people. Nothing like what Wright's The Amalgamation Polka had led me to expect (with the exception of the exhileratingly fun prose.) I gave it up after two chapters, unable to take any more. It reminded me of a suburban version of Last
Exit to Brookyln
in it's examination of hopeless people but with less of Selby Jr.'s sublime insight into human motivation. 

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