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by J. Robert Lennon
Elisa Brown is driving back from her annual, somber visit to her son Silas's grave when something changes. Actually, everything changes: her body is more voluptuous; she's wearing different clothes and driving a new car. When she arrives home, her life is familiar - but different. There is her house, her husband. But in the world she now inhabits, Silas is no longer dead, and his brother is disturbingly changed. Elisa has a new job, and her marriage seems sturdier, and stranger, than she remembers. She finds herself faking her way through a life she is convinced is not her own.
Has she had a psychotic break? Or has she entered a parallel universe? Elisa believed that Silas was doomed from the start, but now that he is alive, what can she do to repair her strained relations with her children? She soon discovers that these questions hinge on being able to see herself as she really is - something that might be impossible for Elisa, or for anyone.
In Familiar, J. Robert Lennon continues his profound and exhilarating exploration of the surreal undercurrents of contemporary American life.
"[A] stealthy and thought-provoking literary thriller." - Publishers Weekly
"Lennon's (Castle, 2009, etc.) latest literary effort chronicles Elisa Macalaster Brown's life as it quantum-shifts into a parallel universe...Approaching the complex internal story without postmodern irony, Lennon has a gift for stretching the borders of character. A surrealistic tale about the enigma to be found in second chances." - Kirkus
"Despite the science-fiction-y premise, this is a beautifully written literary work that hauntingly explores self-identity, familial love, and the nature of consciousness... Lennon refrains from explaining too much about what has happened to Elisa, and readers will be left with the uneasy sense that what seems most familiar might change at any second." - City Book Review
This information about Familiar was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
J. Robert Lennon is the author of seven novels, including Castle and Mailman, and a story collection, Pieces for the Left Hand. His fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Harper's Magazine, Playboy, and The New Yorker. He lives in Ithaca, New York, where he teaches writing at Cornell University.
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