The Arrest

A Novel

By: Jonathan Lethem

Narrated by: Robert Fass

Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins

Publisher's summary

From the award-winning author of The Feral Detective and Motherless Brooklyn comes an utterly original post-collapse yarn about two siblings, the man that came between them, and a nuclear-powered super car.

The Arrest isn’t post-apocalypse. It isn’t a dystopia. It isn’t a utopia. It’s just what happens when much of what we take for granted—cars, guns, computers, and airplanes, for starters—quits working. . . .

Before the Arrest, Sandy Duplessis had a reasonably good life as a screenwriter in L.A. An old college friend and writing partner, the charismatic and malicious Peter Todbaum, had become one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. That didn’t hurt.

Now, post-Arrest, nothing is what it was. Sandy, who calls himself Journeyman, has landed in rural Maine. There he assists the butcher and delivers the food grown by his sister, Maddy, at her organic farm. But then Todbaum shows up in an extraordinary vehicle: a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. Todbaum has spent the Arrest smashing his way across a fragmented and phantasmagorical United States, trailing enmities all the way. Plopping back into the siblings’ life with his usual odious panache, his motives are entirely unclear. Can it be that Todbaum wants to produce one more extravaganza? Whatever he’s up to, it may fall to Journeyman to stop him.

Written with unrepentant joy and shot through with just the right amount of contemporary dread, The Arrest is speculative fiction at its absolute finest.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2020 Jonathan Lethem (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers

An Odd but Enjoyable Story

I liked this book, after a slow start. It was a strange twist on the post-apocalyptic genre, with unusual and likeable characters, a truly unpleasant antagonist, and an unexpected plot.

Wonderful

A hilarious, Pynchon-esque, dystopian novel. Not for everyone, but an amazing and allegorical take for those interested.

Metaphors are alive and hold the page

This book is both about a future world and, as all good sci-fi, about where we are, have been, where we are going. The we here seems to be Americans, suffering a kind of inversion of the frontier as a futurist design with nostalgic glimmer heads back east. Ugh so good.

Californian new aged nonsense

What do you get when you mix post-apocalyptic organic farm with failed/confused screenwriter? The Arrest.

Excellent world building.

Lethem drives his story to the tip of the country and finally over its edge in this slow burn toward madness.

intriguing post apocalyptic

in a world where technology ceases to exist, a lost remain of the previous world comes to haunt a local community. especially resounding where listening to this in times of lockdown

4.26 stars

Very surprised at how good this was. Very different from your average post apocalyptic tale. While not as good as my favorite work from Lethem, which is The Feral Detective, its still very interesting with a good narrator. It seemed boring at the beginning. But , it certainly is not.
4.26 stars

Disappointed

This was my third Jonathan Lethem novel. I loved Motherless Brooklyn and Gun, With Occasional Music but I cannot recommend The Arrest. If it hadn't of been a 7.5 hour book, I never would have finished it. None of the main characters were likable (especially the protagonist) and the only character that was interesting was the antagonist.

Not Worth It

I'm only giving this two stars because I'm withholding a one star review for the hypothetical book I can't actually finish. I did finish this one but it was not worth my time.

This book kind of reminds me of books by Haruki Murakami. The setting is normal Earth but slightly tweaked in a way that's never fully explained or even feasible. Also, this book and Murakami's tend toward being overly verbose and not actually going anywhere. There are way too many parts of this book where it's incredibly easy to zone out but that's okay because you probably didn't miss anything.

The ending and all the characters' motivations leading to the ending are both unexpected and without reason. Also I don't think there was any character progression at all. The people you meet at the start of the book are basically the same at the end. This whole book is a waste of time.

A Real Stinker

What a shame that Jonathan Lethem wasted his talent on this vacuous, shallow story. There are no characters to identify with and very little in the way of a story to drive the narrative forward. There are plenty of clever lines spoken by Todbaum, but they add up to nothing more than cleverness for the sake of cleverness. A waste of 7 and a half hours. I kept listening to the very end in the hope that the ending would redeem the book. Nope.