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Summary
Summary
The most inventive and entertaining novel to date from "a master of the dark arts" (Kelly Link)
A modest house in upstate New York. One in the morning. Three people--a couple and their child--hurry out the door, but it's too late for them. As the virtuosic and terrifying opening scene of Broken River unfolds, a spectral presence seems to be watching with cold and mysterious interest. Soon the house lies abandoned, and years later a new family moves in.
Karl, Eleanor, and their daughter, Irina, arrive from New York City in the wake of Karl's infidelity to start anew. Karl tries to stabilize his flailing art career. Eleanor, a successful commercial novelist, eagerly pivots in a new creative direction. Meanwhile, twelve-year-old Irina becomes obsessed with the brutal murders that occurred in the house years earlier. And, secretly, so does her mother. As the ensemble cast grows to include Louis, a hapless salesman in a carpet warehouse who ishaunted by his past, and Sam, a young woman newly reunited with her jailbird brother, the seemingly unrelated crime that opened the story becomes ominously relevant.
Hovering over all this activity looms a gradually awakening narrative consciousness that watches these characters lie to themselves and each other, unleashing forces that none of them could have anticipated and that put them in mortal danger. Broken River is a cinematic, darkly comic, and sui generis psychological thriller that could only have been written by J. Robert Lennon.
Author Notes
J. Robert Lennon is the author of "The Light of Falling Stars" & "The Funnies". He lives with his wife & children in Ithaca, NY.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
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. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
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, too what'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.--Pitt, David Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
WHY BUDDHISM IS TRUE: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment, by Robert Wright. (Simon & Schuster, $17.) Can Buddhism's central tenets lead to more enlightened individuals and societies? Wright, the author of "The Moral Animal," draws on evolutionary psychology and neuroscience to make his case, weighing the advantages of mindful meditation and how it can potentially benefit humanity. THE END OF EDDY, by Edouard Louis. Translated by Michael Lucey. (Picador, $16.) This autobiographical novel follows gD0UARD a young gay boy's coming-ofage in working-class France. Growing up in a stagnating factory town, where violence and xenophobia are endemic, Eddy was subjected to torment that was only compounded by his sexuality; ultimately, his attraction to men may have been his salvation. CATTLE KINGDOM: The Hidden History of the Cowboy West, by Christopher Knowlton. (Mariner/Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $15.99.) Cattle ranching took off in the 1870s, with wealthy Northeast entrepreneurs lured by the promise of the West's rewards. Knowlton picks three novices, including Teddy Roosevelt, to illustrate the industry's boom and bust; for all the eager forecasting, the era of the cowboys lasted less than two decades. THE AWKWARD AGE, by Francesca Segal. (Riverhead, $16.) When a widowed English piano teacher and an American obstetrician fall in love in North London, their blossoming romance faces just one hurdle: their teenage children, who can't stand each other. As the families work to knit together, some prototypically English scenarios arise ("polite, brittle, utterly empty" conversations, for starters), adding humor to the drama. Our reviewer, Hermione Hoby, called this tidy novel a "spry and accomplished comedy of manners." THE SHOW THAT NEVER ENDS: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock, by David Weigel. (Norton, $17.95.) Weigel delves into the genre's history, including what it inherited from predecessors like the Beach Boys and the Beatles and its resonance today. As John Williams wrote here, the book is "a new history of the genre written by an ardent, straight-faced defender who also understands what is most outlandishly entertaining about it." PERENNIALS, by Mandy Berman. (Random House, $17.) Camp Marigold is the backdrop for this debut novel, where teenagers navigate the perils of female adolescence: puberty, friendship and, above all, sex. At the core is the friendship between Sarah and Fiona, two girls who go on to become counselors, but the book expands to include memories from generations of campers and even Marigold's director.
Guardian Review
This magnificently creepy haunted house thriller keeps the reader guessing with languorous prose and shifts of perspective There is a strong tradition in American writing of the unheimlich house, from Jay Anson's The Amityville Horror to Mark Danielewski's astonishing House of Leaves. This book sits perfectly within that genre. We are in a backwoods place near a rust-belt kind of town; bad things have happened, and will happen. The house is haunted, but the ghost is the house itself. No reason is ever given why the place seems to be so magnetic for awfulness, and the novel is all the better for keeping the background in the back. Lennon 's prose has a languorous, lingering quality with shifts of perspective and tonal jolts that make you concentrate all the harder. I might venture that Broken River ought to be on prize longlists, but as with the house, nothing is certain. It begins with a crime. A couple are fleeing their house with their infant daughter. They don't find refuge. Years later, after the house has become a squat, a new couple with a 12-year-old daughter buy the derelict building. Karl is an ursine hipster incapable of fidelity, whose faltering career in sculpture is leading him to craft customised daggers. The house is affordable, and isolated enough to curb his philandering, or so his wife, Eleanor, thinks. Eleanor is a writer of "romantic" fiction, which she secretly despises. There is some excellent satire about writing here, while the mordant and ironic edge to the book only makes its horrible points the darker: both Karl and Eleanor aren't the creators they feel they could be. The original murderers regroup, worried about the sudden online interest in the case Their child, the preternaturally prescient Irina (one of the less irritating gifted kids of fiction), is trying to be a novelist, a musician and an artist. Irina starts to research the history of the murders that happened near their new home; she is even convinced that a local woman is the missing child who was never found. As she forms a bond with this woman, getting Karl to employ her as a babysitter, there is a dark sense that she may not be the person Irina is convinced she is. There is a dreadful collision that only the reader is aware of, in that both mother and daughter are posting anonymously online about the murders: the novel's switches of perspective are choreographed with skill. At the same time, the original murderers regroup, worried about the sudden online interest in the case. One is surprisingly sympathetic: a man caught up in events he did not condone and cannot control. And daggers, of course, will be important, as the awful denouement unfurls. But there is another character in the book, the observer, a kind of wink at the omniscient narrator. At first, the observer is tethered to the house; as it grows in confidence it roams around both the town of Broken River, and past and possible futures it cannot quite determine. As a narrative device this is audacious. It means that the novel can encompass past, present and future tenses, as well as levels of modality: "she could" as well as "she will". The observer is learning as it studies the sad rural scene, and expands into suburbia. "Or may the observer go off on its own, test its skills and their limits, explore the totality of existence as any god might?" Yet it hankers and lingers, as the reader does, waiting for an answer. There is a climax, but no conclusion. The characters are left in suspended horror: being in the sticks is also being in the Styx. There is a ghastly creepiness to all this, magnified by the cat-like elegance of the prose. Passing observations -- "Happiness would elude them all regardless" -- jostle with askance acuity: "The diner is mostly empty save for a farmer-looking guy falling asleep at the counter and, over in the corner, a Hispanic lady with makeup tattooed on her face who at first seems to be talking into a Bluetooth but actually turns out to be just nuts." The percussive cadence of the final part of that sentence is beautifully done; that the sentence languishes at first doubles the impact. The description of a murder victim doing a "Pepto-Bismol mist" of a cough is shuddersome. Two thirds of the way through this novel, I fantasised about an epic Mexican shootout where Wes Anderson, Guy Maddin, Sofia Coppola, David Lynch and Kevin Smith argued about who should get the film rights. At the same time, I realised it is impossible to film. So much happens inside the characters: so much is presented as hypothetical. This is an astonishing, nasty, brilliant, upsetting work. - Stuart Kelly.
Kirkus Review
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 mattersthe 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. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
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 Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.