J. Robert Lennon Boeken

Bizarre, darkly funny and disconcerting, this collection of stories explores the surreal that lurks in everyday life. Deftly blending the everyday at its most uncanny with smatterings of sci-fi, these fourteen stories probe moments when family members move apart, or drift back together, when dreams crumble and convictions falter, moments when suddenly things fall into place from a new perspective. A Japanese Hibachi grill rekindles a wife's passion for her husband and for revenge. A family take weekend trips to other worlds through a magic portal. Dan Larsen, recently drowned, is brought back to life and makes trouble for the group of friends who'd prefer he hadn't. Ellen invites friends, and her ex-husband, to a memorial party for Bounder, a family pet who hasn't died. Written with Lennon's characteristic deadpan humour these stories catch you off guard and leave you wondering just how much peculiarity the world is capable of absorbing.

A student's suicide note is not what it seems. A high-school football rivalry turns absurd-and deadly. A much-loved cat seems to have been a different animal all along. A pair of identical twins aren't identical at all - or even related. A man finds his own yellowed birth announcement inside a bureau bought at auction.

The car she is driving is not the same car. Her body is more subtly changed. She's wearing different clothes. But a name badge pinned to her blouse tells her she's still Elisa Brown. When she arrives home, her life is familiar-but different. There is her house, her husband. But in the world she now inhabits, Silas is no longer dead, and his brother is disturbingly changed. Elisa has a new job, and her marriage seems sturdier, and stranger. She finds herself faking her way through a life she is convinced is not her own. Has she had a psychotic break? Or has she entered a parallel universe? She soon discovers that these questions hinge on being able to see herself as she really is-something that might be impossible for Elisa, or for anyone

A blackly comic epic - a voyage through small-town America, and through the interior life of its most neurotic mailman. Albert Lippincott is a thirty-year veteran of the Nestor, New York, Post Office - a letter carrier extraordinaire, aggressively cheerful, obsessively efficient. But Albert has a few things to hide. His unfortunate habit, for instance, of reading other people's mail; his abortive university career, complete with a crackpot theory, a nervous breakdown and a thwarted attempt to bite out his professor's eye; a disastrous marriage, grotesquely self-absorbed parents and a sexually ambiguous entanglement with his melodramatic sister. And then there's his attempt to reform the postal system of Kazakhstan and his complicated relationship with his cats. And now his supervisors are on to his letter-opening compulsion, there's a throbbing pain under his left arm and he is finding it increasingly difficult to contain his emotions. Things are closing in on Albert, and he is forced to confront, once and for all, his life's failures. Albert Lippincott is a brilliant creation: flawed, damaged, but fiercely perceptive, and desperate to make meaning out of the mess of existence. He, and Lennon, hold us captive with a wild narrative voice fuelled by desperation and touched by madness.

When an aeroplane crashes into woods just outside a small town in Montana, a network of lives is affected.

Compelling from the first page, and then smart, sophisticated, suspenseful and satisfying throughout-Broken River is a first-class ride. Lee Child

Castle by J. Robert Lennon is a mesmerizing novel about memory, guilt, power, and violenceIn the late winter of 2006, I returned to my home town and bought 612 acres of land on the far western edge of the county." So begins, innocuously enough, J. Robert Lennon's gripping, spooky, and brilliant new novel. Unforthcoming, formal, and more than a little defensive in his encounters with curious locals, Eric Loesch starts renovating a run-down house in the small, upstate New York town of his childhood. When he inspects the title to the property, however, he discovers a chunk of land in the middle of his woods that he does not own. What's more, the name of the owner is blacked out.Loesch sets out to explore the forbidding and almost impenetrable forest—lifeless, it seems, but for a bewitching white deer—that is the site of an eighteenth-century Indian massacre. But this peculiar adventure story has much to do with America's current military misadventures—and Loesch's secrets come to mirror the American psyche in a paranoid age. The answer to what—and who—might lie at the heart of Loesch's property stands at the center of this daring and riveting novel from the author whose writing, according to Ann Patchett, "contains enough electricity to light up the country.""

Mit „Postmann“ gelang dem Amerikaner J. Robert Lennon in den USA und England der Durchbruch, der Vergleiche mit anderen großen amerikanischen Erzählern wie John Irving, Jonathan Franzen oder Michael Chabon nach sich zog. „Postmann“ ist die epische Geschichte eines extravaganten Briefträgers, der seine fehlgeschlagene Lebensgeschichte erzählt und uns dabei mit großer sprachlicher Brillanz und einem sehr feinen Blick auf die nebensächlichen Dinge des Alltags die Augen für die Vergänglichkeit des Lebens öffnet. Für mich das beste Buch des Jahres! William Leith, New Statesman „Brillant geschriebene Mischung aus schwarzem Humor und bewegender Tragik. Schon allein wegen Lennons unnachahmlichem Stil zu empfehlen.“ Marie Claire „Postmann ist originell, authentisch, schräg, wunderbar und auf jeden Fall mitreißend.“ The Times

Ein Flugzeugabsturz verändert das Leben einer kleinen Gemeinde in Montana. Der schicksalhafte Eingriff in den Alltag zwingt die Menschen, längst fällige Entscheidungen zu treffen, Freundschaften zu beenden und neue Bande zu knüpfen.

Was würdest du tun, um endlich die Antworten zu bekommen, nach denen du dich immer gesehnt hast? Den zweieiigen Zwillingen Jane and Lila Pool bleibt gar nichts anderes übrigen, als »hard girls« zu werden. Ihr Vater ist ein verpeilter Professor an einer Kleinstadtuni. Ihre Mutter, Anabel, scheint sich kein bisschen für ihre Kinder zu interessieren. Sie ist oft mit unbekanntem Ziel unterwegs, ist ansonsten von eisiger Gleichgültigkeit und eines Tages ganz verschwunden. Die Mädchen flüchten in ihre eigene Welt, spielen Spionin und sind in einer Theatergruppe aktiv. Als es dort zu einer Gewalttat kommt, laufen sie von zu Hause weg und treiben sich herum. Jane landet schließlich für einige Zeit im Gefängnis, und Lila verschwindet spurlos wie ihre Mutter. Doch dann taucht plötzlich ein Hinweis auf, dass Anabel in den USA gesehen wurde. Lila meldet sich nach Jahren bei Jane – die beiden machen sich auf, ihre Mutter zu suchen. Und erleben eine gefährliche Überraschung nach der anderen. Denn auch in der Familie gilt: Traue niemandem.