His take on dystopia, which I really liked because "the arrest" was not explained and there seemed to be an insinuation that part of the story came from a movie script. Lethem consistently produces thought-provoking books.

When it comes to the end times it's great to have a little humor. And mystery. Lethem doesn't try and solve or explain what happens after The Arrest. Nor does he fully explain what the event is. Adding this mystery to the rest of the mysteries makes for a book that is, truly, at its heart a speculative novel.
The end effect of this book, like all of Lethem's novels, is one of wonder. It lingers after you've finished as the bits of the book (including the set-up of very short chapters) crystalize into a whole.

I have previously enjoyed two novels by Jonathan Lethem (Motherless Brooklyn and As She Climbed Across the Table), so I was excited at the opportunity to receive an advance proof of this one in exchange for an honest review.

I have also read more than my fair share of post-apocalyptic novels. I loved Riddley Walker and Cat's Cradle (both explicitly name-checked by Lethem in the text of The Arrest), and I appreciated Station Eleven, The Road, The Stand, and Fiskadoro, to name a few.

The Arrest, however, left me almost completely cold. None of the characters are particularly sympathetic, the plot is thin enough to be explained in two sentences, and the prose is over-stylized. I feel like I didn't really appreciate what Lethem was going for with this one...maybe it's an inside joke for screenwriters that I just didn't understand.

In any case, I can't recommend this one.

THE ARREST by Jonathan Lethem is a fun novel about a man in a post apocalyptic world. I really liked how the main character, Journeyman, was like me as the reader who didn’t know what was going on this world or what anyone else was thinking. We were both just going along for the ride and seeing what happens. I also really liked the short chapters and the many clever beginnings of those chapters. Maybe I expected more to happen in the end so I felt the ending was lacking but it was a fun journey to get there.

Wow wow wow! What can I say, this book is fun!!! It has a slow start, fun middle, and stellar ending. Get it as soon as possible!

This is an odd book. It has some type of plot, a lot of chapters dedicated to the back story of the main character. Journeyman is the main character, he was visiting his sister in Maine when the Arrest happened, now he is stuck there. The arrest caused loss of computers, planes, motorized cars etc, what caused the arrest is never really explain. His old friend Todbaum shows up having driven across the country in a nuclear powered car, this character talks a lot and provides some of the more boring parts of the book. I didn't dislike the book but I certainly wouldn't read it again.

I've been a fan of Lethem's for years mostly because I love Brooklyn and enjoy the colorful descriptions, history and even the crime. Without that appeal, I felt like the Arrest was based on a weird dream, the sort of dream many people are having these days.

This arrest of time in which technology suddenly stops seemed attractive in many ways but as a chemical analyst I kept looking for a logical explanation. The characters mostly took this arrest in stride although I would have expected that more people would have found the circumstances depressing.
The Arrest is clever and the writing is as always with Lethem, brilliant, but the story itself left me wanting.
I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. While I appreciate having had the opportunity since this book will likely be considered a classic, it wasn't my favorite.

This is a very strange book.............not so sure I really liked it, but can't think of any reason I didn't, except it is super strange!

Thank you, Net Galley, for an advance copy for an honest review.
It was interesting. The writing was good, and I did read it quickly. The world is fallen apart, and Sandy is living near his sister who runs an organic farm. His old boss, Todbaum from LA drives up in an almost indestructible vehicle.
The book went along but several questions were not answered. I am not sure this book was for me. I am giving it 3 stars because the writing kept me interested trying to figure out what was going on.

And Your Point Is...?

It's by Jonathan Lethem, so you expect, and get, some sharp lines, amusing digressions, eccentric characters, and unusual and well imagined scenes and situations. That said, the characters mostly just wander around in an unconvincingly presented post-apocalyptical world that serves more as an extended and obvious metaphor than an actual setting. I did like the fact that everything mechanical or in any way advanced simply slowly stopped working, (the "Arrest"), because it was overcome by whatever the machine version is of creeping existential dread. Lethem had some fun with that, but even then it was all a bit dry and mannered. And that was pretty much it for the book.

(Please note that I received a free ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

Thank you to Harper Collins for allowing me to read this copy.
The book The Arrest, is a futuristic narrative, about a shrunken world. It is a movement of people to one community,. It consists of a few small towns in the northeast in the USA. All know material items, like IPhones, cars, airplanes, restaurants are no longer in existence. There is a patrol of people, the Cordon group, who do not allow you to leave and will be violent if necessary. The people remain safe as long as the cordons are provided food from the group.

There are a few main characters through which the story unfolds. There is Mr Duplessis, also known as , Sandy and Journeyman. He is a middleman and delivers food as his main job. There is Toadbum, who lived in Malibu, CA. Sandy use to work with him in Hollywood. Sandy was a like an editor for the stuff Toadbaum wrote or produced. However Sandy went to the East coast before Toadbaum showed up.

In addition, Sandy has a daughter Maddie, who already was there and who operates the farm to feed the people..

The story gets going when Toadbaum arrives in the vehicle the Blue Streak. It is not of this world. There is much written about the vehicle and Toadbaum concerning the vehicles AI and futuristic capabilities. There is also a book being written by him, Yet another world.. It is about an alternative world with no borders, AI and virtual reality in a sustainable world.

I am not a lover of science fiction or futuristic modalities. However, if that is your thing then delve in to this book. It makes you think about what if? There are a lot of interesting exchanges and what is the purpose of the vehicle and what happens to it all provides for an interesting finish.

The Arrest by Jonathan Lethem is one of the more interesting and inventive sci-fi books I’ve read in a long time. It’s well written and full of interesting, if not necessarily likable, characters. The chapters are short and eminently readable. I was engaged from beginning to end and read it quickly. The book is almost the antithesis of most science fiction in that it’s set in a world where none of our modern day conveniences exists, and everyone is living as they did before the advent of modern technology. The time that all modern conveniences finally fail to work and come to a complete stop, one after the other, is known as The Arrest. The two main characters are roommates, friends and colleagues in Hollywood prior to The Arrest, but one, Peter, eventually far outshines and out-earns the other, Sandy.

At the time of The Arrest, Sandy is stranded at his sister’s organic, East coast farm, while Peter is still on the west coast. Eventually, Peter rumbles into Sandy’s life again and upsets the farm and it’s surrounding towns and their residents. How he does this and how he’s dealt with are the crux of this dystopian story.

It's often said that in troubled times, you get what you deserve--and this new book by exalted author Jonathan Lethem, known for his unique take on a story and setting, is exactly what we need right now. It takes place in a dystopian society, ours, that has completely lost modern technology, it has been arrested (stopped, not gone to jail). Why? We don't really know but all signs point to blaming humans on society's collapse. Sound familiar? Though mostly a narrative-based story that contains short, choppy chapters that run back and forth in time, we see this collapse and hear the story through our protagonist, the Journeyman, who is confused by the times and life as, we are now. Everyone else seems to be coping well, some even thriving in this new environment as the Journeyman, well, goes through a self-discover journey about his place in society. Wow how this hits home. It's an interesting story, very well written and enjoyable, moving along a a fast clip. It is full of unexpected occurrences that become familiar and expected. It's amazing how humans can adapt.

I'm returning the book. Not my type of book. Sorry! Thank you for the opportunity!
I marked it one star!

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for sending me an ARC of The Arrest in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve only read one other book by Mr. Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn, but I quite enjoyed it. And the description of The Arrest sounded cool, so know that I went in with high hopes. But as you may have guessed, this book did not work for me.

There’s not much plot to speak of. Alexander “Sandy” Duplessis, aka The Journeyman, was visiting his sister Maddy on her organic farm in Maine when all the machines stopped working. A Hollywood screenwriter, he’s carved out a simple life for himself there, until his former boss, Peter Todbaum, shows up in a nuclear-powered supercar called The Blue Streak. Strange tension ensues.

Sometimes Literary Fiction just works. It’s brilliantly written, full of richly drawn characters, social commentary and observations. And sometimes it doesn’t work. The writing is good, but the meaning is too oblique and inaccessible, the character’s actions and motivations too hard to understand, and the story seems to go nowhere. Unfortunately, The Arrest fell into this later category for me. Why did Todbaum travel across the country to find Sandy and Maddy? What was the entire story supposed to mean? I still don’t really know. The book was readable, and amusing in places, but was ultimately unsatisfying.

I liked it, but didn't love it. "The Arrest" is the story of a Maine community enduring a post-disaster world. (I can't quite say apocalypse.) There has been an incident--The Arrest-- in which our machines and technology have ceased to work.

I found my favorite parts of the novel were the flashbacks to the characters' life before things went to hell. So perhaps this is a reflection of my lack of interest in "beware the future" fiction. Perhaps because 2020 is grim enough as is. But if dystopia IS your thing, you can safely bump this up to 4 stars because the writing is very good. I've always liked Lethem, but this one didn't quite hit the highs I'm always hopeful for when I open up one of his books.

Netgalley provided me with an e-copy of the book in return for this review.

Jonathan Lethem reinvents his oeuvre in nearly every novel. I can't think of many writers who leap so fearlessly from one genre to the next, riffing on formulas while blowing up notions of what can and cannot be done in conventional forms. The Arrest tackles a common trope, but with an intriguing twist. In this post-apocalyptic setting, all technology, from airplanes to guns, has simply ceased to function. The main character, Sandy Duplessis, is a sad sack who just happened to be visiting his organic farmer of a sister on the east coast when the world falls apart. They form a small communal enclave that seems idyllic until Sandy's past inexplicably shows up, and the community is forced to respond. I almost always enjoy Lethem's novels, and this one is something of a return to his more freewheeling genre-busters like Gun, With Occasional Music and Girl in Landscape. Highly recommended.

At the library where I work, there are quite a few patrons who enjoy a sub-genre called "cozy mystery," where somebody usually gets murdered, but other than the murder, everything is very pleasant and nice. With "The Arrest," Jonathan Lethem has written a sort of cozy post-apocalyptic novel. The world has ended, but other than that, everything is pretty much just fine. People are unhappy, but they seem to be unhappy in the familiar 21st century ways. The town therapist is kept very busy, and he accepts payment in the form of fresh produce and baked goods.

The book is set amid a community of organic farmers in Maine who, conveniently, already have most of the agricultural and survival skills they need in order to survive in relative comfort when guns, fossil fuels, computers and other advanced technologies mysteriously stop functioning. This novel is witty, erudite and at times thought-provoking, but it is also somewhat frustrating.

Some readers might find it altogether unrewarding. Perhaps our desire for easy gratification is being intentionally frustrated, given that two of the central characters are disillusioned and sociopathic (respectively) TV/movie makers.

All four of the female characters in the book are nearly interchangeable in their inscrutability, and all are pretty shallowly drawn, without much insight into their interiority. One of the women is initially referred to as "the woman in the library," and another, who we only hear about second-hand, is referred to as "Pittsburg," which is not her name. This, I think, is a weakness of the book any way you look at it. To be fair to Lethem, we're not invited to get close to the male characters either. The only characters we get to spend much time with are the protagonist, Sandy Duplessis, and his friend/nemesis, the repellent Peter Todbaum.

Jonathan Lethem is a wonderfully skillful writer, and this book is engaging enough on the sentence and paragraph level that I kept reading and finished it with ease. But if you start this book with the expectations of the typical science fiction reader, you will have to either adjust, give up, or risk disappointment. Several plot strands that seem like they might "pay off" in the usual science-fictional ways end up not doing so. Instead, rather like "The Pillow Book" of Sei Shonagon (a recurring literary reference in this novel), they just drift away on the wind.

Interesting enough, but chapters read as ideas or concepts and not a finished product. Also unclear why the characters would resonate with a reader.

Thanks to Netgalley and Ecco for an early ebook. You really never know what to expect from Jonathan Lethem. Has tastes seem to run through so many genres, but you know the stories are going to be well thought out and that there will be fantastic characters delivering great dialogue. The Arrest is the term for when the world, in the very near future, grinds to a complete halt as every machine and device that we so rely on ceases to function. This sends people to work the land and trade for what they need with no idea what is happening beyond where they are. The book focuses on an extended community in rural Maine where Sandy Duplessis, self nicknamed Journeyman, finds himself with the job of deliveryman, working for his sister Maddy, a farmer, and others. Before the arrest, Sandy was a very successful script doctor in Hollywood, working for his former college roommate, Peter Todbaum, who had grown into a powerful producer. In fact, Peter has become so rich that while all his friends were buying islands and safe rooms for the end of the world, Peter had a supercar built that runs on a nuclear reactor and can tunnel through anything. Now that the end has come, Peter has driven across the country to join Sandy in Maine, which quickly throws off the balance of this community, and also Maddy hates Peter. A fun, smart and constantly surprising book.