Subdivision (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781644450482)

A heady, inventive, fantastical novel about the nature of memory and the difficulty of confronting trauma

An unnamed woman checks into a guesthouse in a mysterious district known only as the Subdivision. The guesthouse's owners, Clara and the Judge, are welcoming and helpful, if oddly preoccupied by the perpetually baffling jigsaw puzzle in the living room. With little more than a hand-drawn map and vague memories of her troubled past, the narrator ventures out in search of a job, an apartment, and a fresh start in life.

Accompanied by an unusually assertive digital assistant named Cylvia, the narrator is drawn deeper into an increasingly strange, surreal, and threatening world, which reveals itself to her through a series of darkly comic encounters reminiscent of Gulliver's Travels. A lovelorn truck driver . . . a mysterious child . . . a watchful crow. A cryptic birthday party. A baffling physics experiment in a defunct office tower where some calamity once happened. Through it all, the narrator is tempted and manipulated by the bakemono, a shape-shifting demon who poses a distinctly terrifying danger.

Harrowing, meticulous, and deranged, Subdivision is a brilliant maze of a novel from the writer Kelly Link has called "a master of the dark arts." With the narrative intensity and mordant humor familiar to readers of Broken River, J. Robert Lennon continues his exploration of the mysteries of perception and memory.

Author: J. Robert Lennon
ISBN-10: 1644450488
ISBN-13: 9781644450482
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Language: English
Published: 04/06/2021
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 0.70d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2021
Publishers Weekly 02/15/2021
Booklist 03/01/2021 pg. 26