"The year's best novel." –The New Republic
"Emotionally complex, stylistically sophisticated. . . . As a story about a quarrelsome family entangled with impossible ideals, it's touchingly universal." –
The Washington Post "A typically Lethem-esque cast of zanies, communalists, sexual adventurers, innocents, druggies, dreamers, and do-gooders . . . whose lives collide and clash with gut-busting humor, heart, and hubris." –
Elle "As ambitious as Mailer, as funny as Philip Roth and as stinging as Bob Dylan . . .
Dissident Gardens shows Lethem in full possession of his powers as a novelist, as he smoothly segues between historical periods and internal worlds . . . Erudite, beautifully written, wise, compassionate, heartbreaking and pretty much devoid of nostalgia." –
Los Angeles Times
"
Dissident Gardens seamlessly weaves together three generations, yet it doesn't broadcast itself as a multigenerational epic, nor is it afflicted by the desire to pose as the next great American novel. It's an intimate book." –
The New York Times Book Review
"A tour de force, a brilliant, satiric journey through America's dissident history."–
The Star Tribune
"Lethem has artfully blended, redefined, ignored, satirized and enriched the traditional categories of fiction." –
The Plain Dealer
"Remarkable. . . . Lethem's best novel since
Motherless Brooklyn. . . . Crackle[s] with wordplay and intelligence." –
The Miami Herald
"The writing soars. . . . Lethem can riff with the best, spinning knockout lines that make you stop and stare . . . while you admire a sentence's every turn." –
The Seattle Times "An assured, expert literary performance by one of our most important writers. . . . Magnificent." –
Los Angeles Review of Books
"Brilliantly caustic and deeply moving. . . . Rather than a history book writ small, we realize, this is a powerful family portrait writ large." –
Haaretz (Israel)
"A brilliant, funny, compendious novel at whose heart lies a sharp, slim blade of thought and style. It is the quality of [Lethem's] perception, his empathy, that makes this material new: that sharpness is the sharpness of a mind at work, re-radicalizing a radical era with notions both literary and political that are outside itself." –
The Guardian (London)
"A righteous, stupendously involving novel about the personal toll of failed political movements and the perplexing obstacles to doing good. . . . Lethem is breathtaking in this torrent of potent voices, searing ironies, pop-culture allusions, and tragicomic complexities." –
Booklist (starred review)
"The cast is a heady, swirly mix of fascinating, lonely people. Lethem's writing, as always, packs a witty punch. . . . As illuminating of 20th-century American history as it is of the human burden of overcoming alienation." –
Publishers Weekly