This thought-provoking audiobook does not disappoint as it explores the divide between the privileged and the impoverished in the days between Trump's surprise victory and his inauguration. Phoebe Siegler, portrayed by Zosia Mamet, is one of a kind: sarcastic, self-deprecating, hilarious, and endearing. As the story begins, Phoebe arrives in L.A. from New York City in search of her best friend's missing daughter. She hires Charles Heist—The Feral Detective—to help her. The two develop a unique relationship as they search for Arabella and find themselves in unexpected danger. Part mystery, part social commentary on a world turned upside down following the election, the audiobook explores the way our values and our communities respond to social change and what happens to those who find themselves lost or forgotten. K.S.M. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

09/10/2018
Lethem hits a wall in his forgettable latest (following A Gambler’s Anatomy). Phoebe Siegler, a consummate New Yorker, travels to the Mojave Desert in search of Arabella, a friend’s missing daughter and an 18-year-old dropout of Reed College. She hires hirsute Charles Heist, the “feral detective,” who lives with three dogs and an opossum. Quickly falling for his woodsy charms, Phoebe travels with Heist to the far reaches of the desert, where the mostly female Rabbit group is engaged in a long standoff with the male Bear group. To save Arabella, Heist will have to do battle with the charismatic Bear leader, called Solitary Love, as Phoebe learns to question her assumptions here on “the far side of the Neoliberal Dream.” The novel feels like it was written as a kind of therapy in the aftermath of the 2016 election—which Lethem’s characters frequently bring up—as well as the death of Leonard Cohen, who also gets a lot of ink. None of this can salvage the book, which features howling men and howling bad prose (during a sex scene, Phoebe longs for Heist to “uncrimp my foil”), making this tone-deaf Raymond Chandler pastiche an experiment worth avoiding. (Nov.)

A highbrow mystery. . . . Fans of Motherless Brooklyn take note.” — Washington Post

“Being a Jonathan Lethem novel, natural, The Feral Detective has plenty to say about American society along the way.” — Newsday

“Lethem [is] a master of the genre-bending detective novel and eccentric characters.” — Huffington Post

“The Feral Detective investigates our haunted America in all its contemporary guises — at the edge of the city, beyond the blank desert, in the apartment next door. It’s a nimble and uncanny performance, brimming with Lethem’s trademark verve and wit.” — Colson Whitehead

“Like The Crying of Lot 49 as written and directed by Elaine May, The Feral Detective is hilarious and terrifying and wrenching. Phoebe is one of the grandest, funniest heroes I’ve come upon in a long time.” — Megan Abbott

“Wild, urgent, and very funny. As always, Lethem writes knowingly and brilliantly about weird, off-the-grid, wayward America. In his ever-more-electric prose, he illuminates both the barbarity and the beauty.” — Dana Spiotta

“I want to read a shelf of Heist. I want to make him my new Travis McGee, and that’s, seriously, the highest praise I know.”  — Joshua Cohen

“A funny but rage-fueled stunner. . . . Both [characters] are compelling, as are the desert setting and the vividly realized descriptions of its dwellers. . . . An unrelentingly paced tale. . . . Utterly unique and absolutely worthwhile.” — Booklist (starred review)

“Surrealistic, genre-bending. . . . The personal nature of Phoebe’s tectonic shift in the desert is palpable, made flesh by Lethem’s linguistic alchemy. . . . A haunting tour of the gulf between the privileged and the dispossessed.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

A highbrow mystery. . . . Fans of Motherless Brooklyn take note.

Wild, urgent, and very funny. As always, Lethem writes knowingly and brilliantly about weird, off-the-grid, wayward America. In his ever-more-electric prose, he illuminates both the barbarity and the beauty.

Being a Jonathan Lethem novel, natural, The Feral Detective has plenty to say about American society along the way.

A funny but rage-fueled stunner. . . . Both [characters] are compelling, as are the desert setting and the vividly realized descriptions of its dwellers. . . . An unrelentingly paced tale. . . . Utterly unique and absolutely worthwhile.

The Feral Detective investigates our haunted America in all its contemporary guises — at the edge of the city, beyond the blank desert, in the apartment next door. It’s a nimble and uncanny performance, brimming with Lethem’s trademark verve and wit.

I want to read a shelf of Heist. I want to make him my new Travis McGee, and that’s, seriously, the highest praise I know.” 

Lethem [is] a master of the genre-bending detective novel and eccentric characters.

Like The Crying of Lot 49 as written and directed by Elaine May, The Feral Detective is hilarious and terrifying and wrenching. Phoebe is one of the grandest, funniest heroes I’ve come upon in a long time.

A highbrow mystery. . . . Fans of Motherless Brooklyn take note.

Wild, urgent, and very funny. As always, Lethem writes knowingly and brilliantly about weird, off-the-grid, wayward America. In his ever-more-electric prose, he illuminates both the barbarity and the beauty.

I want to read a shelf of Heist. I want to make him my new Travis McGee, and that’s, seriously, the highest praise I know.” 

A funny but rage-fueled stunner. . . . Both [characters] are compelling, as are the desert setting and the vividly realized descriptions of its dwellers. . . . An unrelentingly paced tale. . . . Utterly unique and absolutely worthwhile.

The Feral Detective investigates our haunted America in all its contemporary guises — at the edge of the city, beyond the blank desert, in the apartment next door. It’s a nimble and uncanny performance, brimming with Lethem’s trademark verve and wit.

A highbrow mystery. . . . Fans of Motherless Brooklyn take note.

Being a Jonathan Lethem novel, natural, The Feral Detective has plenty to say about American society along the way.

Lethem [is] a master of the genre-bending detective novel and eccentric characters.

Like The Crying of Lot 49 as written and directed by Elaine May, The Feral Detective is hilarious and terrifying and wrenching. Phoebe is one of the grandest, funniest heroes I’ve come upon in a long time.

★ 2018-08-05

Lethem (A Gambler's Anatomy, 2016, etc.) returns with his first surrealistic, genre-bending detective novel since Motherless Brooklyn (1999).

Having long abandoned Brooklyn for the West Coast, Lethem has written a hallucinatory novel set in the desert fringes of the Inland Empire in California. Readers, many of whom should be absorbed by this story, will soon realize the author has more to say about the current state of America and his deeply fractured heroine than lies on the surface. Our narrator is Phoebe Siegler, once a bourgeois Manhattanite with a sarcastic streak, now unmoored by the last presidential election. Trying to break her malaise, she travels to Los Angeles at the behest of a friend whose teenage daughter has disappeared during a Leonard Cohen-inspired pilgrimage to Mount Baldy. She's referred to private detective Charles Heist, a "fiftyish cowboyish fellow" dubbed "The Feral Detective" for his predilection for saving strays, be they kids or animals. What might have devolved into a Coen Brothers-esque farce instead offers a dark reflection on human nature as Heist introduces Phoebe to something like a cult living on the fringes of society—what might happen if hippies and outcasts left civilization, never to return, devolving into a tribal, ritualistic culture tinged with conspiracy theory. It's a place where the seemingly laconic Heist has deep roots and a culture where his mere presence yields disturbing violence. There's not really a mystery to solve, and the sexual tension between Phoebe and Heist feels obligatory, but Lethem fills his canvas with tinder-dry tension. The subtext is the division in American society, but the personal nature of Phoebe's tectonic shift in the desert is palpable, made flesh by Lethem's linguistic alchemy. "Old fears had flown the coop without my noticing and been replaced: I was positively aching to abscond into the Mojave again, the fewer road signs the better," she says. "No cities for me now, or families or tribes."

A haunting tour of the gulf between the privileged and the dispossessed.