The Great Lenore
by J M Tohline
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Pub Date Jun 15 2011 | Archive Date Sep 01 2012
Description
The Great Lenore is the tale of the ravishing young Brit, Lenore, whose falsely-reported death provides her with an opportunity to begin a new life. Before she can disappear for good, however, she longs to know the reaction of her two-timing husband and his aristocratic family.
To find out, Lenore enlists Richard—an outsider in the money-and-booze sodden landscape of Nantucket high society—to be her eyes and ears. As events unfold, Richard discovers the entanglements of Lenore’s relationships are more intricate than he ever expected.
This elegant debut paints an idyllic island surrounded by reflective seas and encased in a world where souls collide, mysteries thicken, and dreams unravel. With lively, modern prose reminiscent of Fitgerald, Tohline orchestrates a playful literary riff on affluence, love, grief, and duplicity. In the author’s words, “[It] is about dreams, and about the things we sacrifice to chase them.”
J M Tohline grew up in a small town just north of Boston and lives in a quiet house on the edge of the Great Plains with his cat, The Old Man And The Sea. He is 26 years old and he loves literature more than he loves breathing. The Great Lenore is his first novel.
To find out, Lenore enlists Richard—an outsider in the money-and-booze sodden landscape of Nantucket high society—to be her eyes and ears. As events unfold, Richard discovers the entanglements of Lenore’s relationships are more intricate than he ever expected.
This elegant debut paints an idyllic island surrounded by reflective seas and encased in a world where souls collide, mysteries thicken, and dreams unravel. With lively, modern prose reminiscent of Fitgerald, Tohline orchestrates a playful literary riff on affluence, love, grief, and duplicity. In the author’s words, “[It] is about dreams, and about the things we sacrifice to chase them.”
J M Tohline grew up in a small town just north of Boston and lives in a quiet house on the edge of the Great Plains with his cat, The Old Man And The Sea. He is 26 years old and he loves literature more than he loves breathing. The Great Lenore is his first novel.
Advance Praise
The Washington Independent Review of Books
“When I first met Lenore, she’d been dead for four days.” This arresting sentence begins JM Tohline’s homage to The Great Gatsby. It may not seem fair to compare a 26-year-old’s first published book with what many believe is the Great American Novel. But, as his title makes clear, Tohline invites the comparison. His plot is a contemporary Gatsby: an ambitious self-made man romances a beautiful upper-class girl, abandons her in order to make his fortune and suffers everlasting regret; she in turn marries a drunken philanderer and inevitably leaves destruction in her wake. In an intriguing plot twist, Tohline’s heroine, Lenore, misses a flight that crashes with no survivors, and then punishes her adulterous husband by concealing the fact of her survival. Lenore plans to attend her own funeral to observe the putative widower’s behavior. She does, however, inform her one-time lover of the ruse.
The characters’ narcissism mirrors the personalities found in Fitzgerald’s novel. Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, Jordan — all are concerned almost exclusively with themselves. Gatsby idealizes Daisy just as Jez puts Lenore on a pedestal. The parallels continue: Richard romances Cecelia, the girl next door; Nick Carraway pursues Daisy’s friend Jordan. Chas’s mistress, Lily, is married to a man named Wilson; Tom Buchanan’s paramour is Myrtle Wilson. Without spoiling the plot, suffice it to say that Lenore’s denouement does not stray far from Gatsby.
As a devotee of American literature, I share Tohline’s admiration for the genre. He chooses as an epigraph the first stanza of Poe’s Lenore, which, fittingly, is a paean to a girl who dies young. His high regard for Hemingway is apparent in his prose — not to mention the name of his cat, which he obligingly reveals is “The Old Man and the Sea.” Reimagining famous works of literature is a time-honored tradition: Sophocles, Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf are just a few of the authors whose works have been reshaped; James Joyce, Jean Rhys and Geraldine Brooks are three of the many writers who reworked great stories to wide acclaim. JM Tohline’s tribute puts him in excellent company. Now that he has retold Fitzgerald’s story, I look forward to the day he tells his own. -Susan Green
New York Journal of Books
JM Tohline's first novel, The Great Lenore, is a beautiful book. It is beautiful in the same way that J.D. Salinger's books are beautiful: lyrical without being pretentious or self-absorbed, melodic without being baroque; it is refreshing in the same way a fortunate musical composition hangs in your consciousness after the last note has sounded, making it impossible for long moments to think. One just feels. -Jeremey McGuire
Small Press Reviews
If imitation is, indeed, the sincerest form of flattery, then Tohline’s borrowing — some might say “riffing” — isn’t a bad thing at all. The novel is Tohline’s homage to his literary heroes and, as an author, he has the good sense to steal from the best. What’s more, he brings enough of his own imagination to the table to make The Great Lenore entirely his own.
A tribute. A riff. An homage. A mash-up.
Whatever you decide to call it, The Great Lenore is, in the final analysis, a page-turner that introduces the literary world to an author with a clear and profound appreciation for the American literary canon. -Marc Schuster
Erin Reads
The Great Lenore is a book I very much enjoyed. It had the feel of The Great Gatsby: a narrator finds himself tangled up in the affairs of a world of which he never intended to be a part. There are secrets, there is love and a legendary woman. Some dreams are grasped while others slip away. Yet The Great Lenore is also very much its own book, never more than subtly evoking a whiff of Fitzgerald’s classic. More often than Gatsby, Lenore took my breath away, sneaked up behind me and coolly turned what I thought I knew about the story on its head.
Fan Book Trailer for The Great Lenore
“When I first met Lenore, she’d been dead for four days.” This arresting sentence begins JM Tohline’s homage to The Great Gatsby. It may not seem fair to compare a 26-year-old’s first published book with what many believe is the Great American Novel. But, as his title makes clear, Tohline invites the comparison. His plot is a contemporary Gatsby: an ambitious self-made man romances a beautiful upper-class girl, abandons her in order to make his fortune and suffers everlasting regret; she in turn marries a drunken philanderer and inevitably leaves destruction in her wake. In an intriguing plot twist, Tohline’s heroine, Lenore, misses a flight that crashes with no survivors, and then punishes her adulterous husband by concealing the fact of her survival. Lenore plans to attend her own funeral to observe the putative widower’s behavior. She does, however, inform her one-time lover of the ruse.
The characters’ narcissism mirrors the personalities found in Fitzgerald’s novel. Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, Jordan — all are concerned almost exclusively with themselves. Gatsby idealizes Daisy just as Jez puts Lenore on a pedestal. The parallels continue: Richard romances Cecelia, the girl next door; Nick Carraway pursues Daisy’s friend Jordan. Chas’s mistress, Lily, is married to a man named Wilson; Tom Buchanan’s paramour is Myrtle Wilson. Without spoiling the plot, suffice it to say that Lenore’s denouement does not stray far from Gatsby.
As a devotee of American literature, I share Tohline’s admiration for the genre. He chooses as an epigraph the first stanza of Poe’s Lenore, which, fittingly, is a paean to a girl who dies young. His high regard for Hemingway is apparent in his prose — not to mention the name of his cat, which he obligingly reveals is “The Old Man and the Sea.” Reimagining famous works of literature is a time-honored tradition: Sophocles, Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf are just a few of the authors whose works have been reshaped; James Joyce, Jean Rhys and Geraldine Brooks are three of the many writers who reworked great stories to wide acclaim. JM Tohline’s tribute puts him in excellent company. Now that he has retold Fitzgerald’s story, I look forward to the day he tells his own. -Susan Green
New York Journal of Books
JM Tohline's first novel, The Great Lenore, is a beautiful book. It is beautiful in the same way that J.D. Salinger's books are beautiful: lyrical without being pretentious or self-absorbed, melodic without being baroque; it is refreshing in the same way a fortunate musical composition hangs in your consciousness after the last note has sounded, making it impossible for long moments to think. One just feels. -Jeremey McGuire
Small Press Reviews
If imitation is, indeed, the sincerest form of flattery, then Tohline’s borrowing — some might say “riffing” — isn’t a bad thing at all. The novel is Tohline’s homage to his literary heroes and, as an author, he has the good sense to steal from the best. What’s more, he brings enough of his own imagination to the table to make The Great Lenore entirely his own.
A tribute. A riff. An homage. A mash-up.
Whatever you decide to call it, The Great Lenore is, in the final analysis, a page-turner that introduces the literary world to an author with a clear and profound appreciation for the American literary canon. -Marc Schuster
Erin Reads
The Great Lenore is a book I very much enjoyed. It had the feel of The Great Gatsby: a narrator finds himself tangled up in the affairs of a world of which he never intended to be a part. There are secrets, there is love and a legendary woman. Some dreams are grasped while others slip away. Yet The Great Lenore is also very much its own book, never more than subtly evoking a whiff of Fitzgerald’s classic. More often than Gatsby, Lenore took my breath away, sneaked up behind me and coolly turned what I thought I knew about the story on its head.
Fan Book Trailer for The Great Lenore
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9780984510559 |
| PRICE | 14.95 |
| PAGES | 204 |
