Girl in Landscape
Ratings8
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings8
Average rating3.6
Girl in Landscape is a daring exploration of the violent nature of sexual awakening, a meditation on language and perception, and an homage to the great American tradition of the Western. • "Jonathan Lethem's imagination [is]...marvelously fertile." --Newsday The heroine is young Pella Marsh, whose mother dies just before her family flees a post-apocalyptic Brooklyn for the frontier of a recently discovered planet. Hating her ineffectual father, and troubled by a powerful attraction to a virile but dangerous loner who holds sway over the little colony, Pella sets out on a course of discovery that will have tragic and irrevocable consequences for the humans in the community and the ancient inhabitants, known only as archbuilders. Girl in Landscape finds Jonathan Lethem twisting forms and literary conventions to create a dazzling, completely unconventional tale.
Reviews with the most likes.
A coming of age story that isn't schlocky or about a kid “learning who they truly are and the power of love and other wonderfully boring things.” It's the story of a girl who doesn't really fit in with her peers and wants to be older until she learns that most adults aren't any better. It's the story of a girl realizing there are a limited number of people in the world (well universe) who she can connect with regardless of her age. (Or at least that's what I got out of it) It's depressing, it's oddly uplifting, it's wonderfully weird at times and yet very simple.
An enjoyable read. I struggled with this author's Fortress of Solitude, but this ‘sci-fi western' set on a distant planet where settlers try to live amongst the ruins of an ancient civilisation was much more to my liking. The characters, especially the main protagonist Pella Marsh, were believable and there were some nice touches, such as the tiny household deer. Probably not up there with the classics of the genre but I'd recommend it to any SF fan.
