Broken River

March 27, 2017
“All of the stories we tell ourselves are wrong,” says a character in Lennon’s (See You in Paradise) novel, a family drama and murder mystery whose metafictional flourishes bear out the truth of that observation. When Brooklyn artist Karl Jandek moves with his novelist wife, Eleanor, to an upstate home in Broken River, N.Y., to save their failing marriage, they neglect to tell their adolescent daughter, Irina, that the house’s previous owners were brutally murdered on its grounds a decade earlier. Bored with her new home and writing a novel herself, Irina begins poking around the Internet, participating in chat groups devoted to the unsolved crime and posting a photo of Sam Fike, a young woman in town whom she is convinced is really Samantha Geary, the grown daughter of the murdered couple. When the murderers get wind of the renewed interest in their cold case, the stage is set for their violent return to the scene of their crime. Lennon alternates the scenes of his coalescing crime drama with asides involving the Observer, a silent, substanceless embodiment of the all-seeing omniscient narrative viewpoint that is powerless to prevent the snowballing misinterpretations and misunderstandings each character sees from his or her own perspective. The result is a finely tuned tragedy whose well-developed characters are all the more sympathetic for the inexorability of their fates.

June 26, 2017
An omniscient, objective narrative viewpoint—the Observer—floats ethereally through Lennon’s psychological thriller, highlighting the actions, thoughts, and backstories of the numerous characters and offering hints about their futures. Voice actor Huber employs a semi-hushed, mellow voice for the ghostly figure, who focuses primarily on the protagonist, a novelist named Eleanor and her unsuccessful sculptor husband Karl, who, hoping to mend their marriage, have moved from Brooklyn to Broken River, N.Y., with their 12-year-old daughter, Irina. Soon after the precocious Irina discovers that her new house was the scene of a savage murder 10 years ago, she becomes obsessed with the unsolved crime. The Observer’s interest shifts from chapters involving these characters to those in which two of the original perpetrators, the unhappy, guilt-ridden Louis and Joe, a hulking brute who enjoys killing, respond to the new interest in their crime. Huber adds an angry edge to Eleanor’s speech and a slow, hipster stoner vibe to Karl’s conversation, while Irina is on a continuous youthful emotional roller coaster. The pathetic Louis spends his time either bemoaning his life’s mistakes or obeying Joe’s grunting monosyllabic demands. When they and their potential victims face off, Huber performs the scene as shocking and suspenseful, no small task from the Observer’s more detached perspective. A Graywolf paperback.

March 15, 2017
A violent trespass against a young child's family in 2005 comes back to haunt another family in the present day.Lennon (See You in Paradise, 2014, etc.) takes a dark turn with this strange novel that combines domestic drama, violent crime, and a metaphysical entity that largely serves as a narrative device. The book opens in 2005, as a father and a mother are murdered in the woods, their small daughter the lone survivor. A dozen years later, their former home is rented by a dysfunctional family. Karl is a sculptor in decline, being punished for having an affair. His wife, Eleanor, is a cancer survivor and midrange novelist who seethes against her husband's failings. Their 12-year-old daughter, Irina, is bright, precocious, and obsessed with the murder. This is the stuff of more traditional narratives, but soon Lennon feels the need to introduce -The Observer,- an ethereal witness that can conveniently look in on any character at any time. This results in passages like, -For now, however, the Observer can feel the gears of cause and effect locking together, increasing in rotational velocity. Previously hidden truths will soon become known to its subjects. Events long gestating in the womb of possibility will soon be dramatically born.- Eventually we meet Sam, an adolescent with a mysterious past, and a pair of pugnacious thugs with a leading role in the events to come. The grandiosity of Lennon's paranormal patina doesn't elevate the predictability of the book's domestic drama nor explain its violent end. The book pretty much tells us this: -None of it matters--the coincidences, the connections. Things look connected because everything is connected in a town like Broken River. That's why people want to leave small towns. Everything reminds them of some stupid shit they did or that was done to them.- An eminently readable but melodramatic story that dilutes its suspense with far-fetched metafiction.

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Starred review from April 15, 2017

This latest from the quirky and widely admired Lennon (Mailman; Castle) opens with chaos: two adults and a child flee an upstate New York farmhouse in panic. The adults are soon brutally murdered, and the child goes missing. Fast-forward a dozen years: the house, itself a character, has deteriorated, occupied only by druggies, horny teens, and a noncorporeal presence known as the Observer. Newly renovated, it becomes the home of Karl, a sculptor fleeing his infidelities in New York City, though not successfully, along with his chick-lit novelist wife, Eleanor; his daughter Irina, a precocious 12-year-old fascinated by the murders; and, of course, the Observer. Events converge: Eleanor and Irina join a website speculating on the killings, while Louis, a carpet salesman and then unwilling accomplice to Eleanor and Irina, calls in the true perpetrator, Joe, the ultimate socio/psychopath. Violence permeates the end of the story; there are multiple murders at a marijuana farm and a final showdown at the house. Who lives, who dies? The Observer knows. VERDICT Vintage Lennon, full of intertwined plots, speculation, complicated and descriptive writing, and even some humor amid the bloodshed.--Robert E. Brown, Oswego, NY

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2017
Here's a gripping and memorable thriller about a family that moves into a house where, several years earlier, a double homicide took place. Karl, Eleanor, and Irina, the new family, offer an interesting dynamic: Karl is a sculptor whose hobby appears to be philandery, Eleanor is a novelist with a serious case of writer's block, and Irina is an inquisitive young girl who becomes immediately and obsessively curious about the murders. Curious enough that she befriends an older girl, who, she believes, is the daughter of the man and woman who were killed. Oh, and there's a guy named Louis, who sells carpets for a living, except he has another, more violent vocation, toowhat's his connection to the murders? Lots of mysteries in this tricky story, lots of great characters, and one really cool narrative device: the story is told from the perspective of an observer, a sort of invisible presence without corporeal substance, as the author describes it. A ghost? A being from another plane? On its surface a clever thriller, underneath a dark family drama, this is one haunting novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)