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Girl in Landscape

A Novel

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One the irrepressibly inventive Jonathan Lethem could weld science fiction and the Western into a mesmerizing novel of exploration and otherness, sexual awakening and loss. At the age of 13 Pella Marsh loses her mother and her home on the scorched husk that is planet Earth. Her sorrowing family emigrates to the Planet of the Archbuilders, whose mysterious inhabitants have names like Lonely Dumptruck and Hiding Kneeland a civilization that and frightens their human visitors.

On this new world, spikily independent Pella becomes as uneasy envoy between two species. And at the same time is unwilling drawn to a violent loner who embodies all the paranoid machismo of the frontier ethic. Combining the tragic grandeur of John Ford’s The Searchers and the sexual tension of Lolita and transporting them to a planet light years, Girl in Landscape is a tour de force.

“One of the most original voices among younger American novelists. . . . Jonathan Lethem’s imagination [is] . . . marvelously fertile.” —Newsday

“Lethem is opening up blue sky for American fiction.” —Village Voice

“Complex, scary and finally moving.” —Atlanta Journal & Constitution
Jonathan Lethem is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including Dissident Gardens, Chronic City, The Fortress of Solitude, and Motherless Brooklyn, and of the essay collection The Ecstasy of Influence, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Lethem has been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and the New York Times, among other publications. View titles by Jonathan Lethem
"One of the most original voices among younger American novelists....Jonathan Lethem's imagination [is]...marvelously fertile." --Newsday

"Lethem is opening up blue sky for American fiction."--Village Voice

"Complex, scary and finally moving."--Atlanta Journal & Constitution

About

One the irrepressibly inventive Jonathan Lethem could weld science fiction and the Western into a mesmerizing novel of exploration and otherness, sexual awakening and loss. At the age of 13 Pella Marsh loses her mother and her home on the scorched husk that is planet Earth. Her sorrowing family emigrates to the Planet of the Archbuilders, whose mysterious inhabitants have names like Lonely Dumptruck and Hiding Kneeland a civilization that and frightens their human visitors.

On this new world, spikily independent Pella becomes as uneasy envoy between two species. And at the same time is unwilling drawn to a violent loner who embodies all the paranoid machismo of the frontier ethic. Combining the tragic grandeur of John Ford’s The Searchers and the sexual tension of Lolita and transporting them to a planet light years, Girl in Landscape is a tour de force.

“One of the most original voices among younger American novelists. . . . Jonathan Lethem’s imagination [is] . . . marvelously fertile.” —Newsday

“Lethem is opening up blue sky for American fiction.” —Village Voice

“Complex, scary and finally moving.” —Atlanta Journal & Constitution

Author

Jonathan Lethem is the New York Times bestselling author of nine novels, including Dissident Gardens, Chronic City, The Fortress of Solitude, and Motherless Brooklyn, and of the essay collection The Ecstasy of Influence, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, Lethem has been published in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and the New York Times, among other publications. View titles by Jonathan Lethem

Praise

"One of the most original voices among younger American novelists....Jonathan Lethem's imagination [is]...marvelously fertile." --Newsday

"Lethem is opening up blue sky for American fiction."--Village Voice

"Complex, scary and finally moving."--Atlanta Journal & Constitution

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