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Familiar
A haunting, enigmatic novel about a woman who is given a second chance—and isn’t sure whether she really wants it.
Elisa Brown is driving back from her annual, somber visit to her son Silas’s grave when something changes. Actually, everything changes: her body is more voluptuous; she’s wearing different clothes and driving a new car. 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, than she remembers. 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? Elisa believed that Silas was doomed from the start, but now that he is alive, what can she do to repair her strained relations with her children? 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.
In Familiar, J. Robert Lennon continues his profound and exhilarating exploration of the surreal undercurrents of contemporary American life.
Elisa Brown is driving back from her annual, somber visit to her son Silas’s grave when something changes. Actually, everything changes: her body is more voluptuous; she’s wearing different clothes and driving a new car. 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, than she remembers. 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? Elisa believed that Silas was doomed from the start, but now that he is alive, what can she do to repair her strained relations with her children? 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.
In Familiar, J. Robert Lennon continues his profound and exhilarating exploration of the surreal undercurrents of contemporary American life.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
25 people are currently reading
1420 people want to read
About the author
J. Robert Lennon
44 books288 followersJ. Robert Lennon is the author of three story collections and ten novels, and is co-editor of CRITICAL HITS, an anthology of writing on video games. He lives in Ithaca, New York.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 254 reviews
October 23, 2012
A naturalistically written book that plays with the true strangeness of memory, character, and perception. About halfway through I started to worry that the author was heading off toward some cheap alternate universe story cliches but Familiar is a much more thoughtful novel than that. It is genuinely disturbing in the ways it subtly questions the comfort of our memories and our settled evaluations of our life events. As the story progresses, it is decreasingly clear what of the protagonist's problems are external or internal, but by the end it does seem that no matter what has "really" happened, it's herself she has to deal with.
I think this is one of my top four books read this year. It beat out The Marriage Plot by a mile. It makes a good double feature with Julian Barnes' Sense of An Ending, but I felt let down at the end by the Barnes novel (much as I love some of his work). Familiar told me less at the finish, and said more.
I think this is one of my top four books read this year. It beat out The Marriage Plot by a mile. It makes a good double feature with Julian Barnes' Sense of An Ending, but I felt let down at the end by the Barnes novel (much as I love some of his work). Familiar told me less at the finish, and said more.
January 24, 2013
I picked up this book because the concept seemed intriguing - a woman driving down the road suddenly finds herself in the middle of a life that is like her own, but not. Has she had a mental breakdown, or has she slipped into a parallel universe? The concept stays interesting, but unfortunately the plot doesn't hold together at all.
While it is interesting to watch the story unfold, discovering the ways the narrators life is different and seeing what happens as she tries to make various changes to shape her new life into the mold of her old one, or a new and different life altogether. But the characters lack real emotion and depth, and the key conceit of the novel remains frustratingly unresolved. You would think that the author would not have embarked on this story without some idea of an ending, and yet it seems as if that is exactly what has happened. In the end, Familiar leaves the reader feeling cheated and unsatisfied.
While it is interesting to watch the story unfold, discovering the ways the narrators life is different and seeing what happens as she tries to make various changes to shape her new life into the mold of her old one, or a new and different life altogether. But the characters lack real emotion and depth, and the key conceit of the novel remains frustratingly unresolved. You would think that the author would not have embarked on this story without some idea of an ending, and yet it seems as if that is exactly what has happened. In the end, Familiar leaves the reader feeling cheated and unsatisfied.
March 25, 2014
Good weird stuff. At times I found Elisa hard to like, and like others I just couldn't understand why she didn't just sit down and tell her husband what she was experiencing. I understand that their relationship had serious issues, but obviously she can see that in her "new" life things are different and they've obviously been going to couples therapy and making attempts at fixing their marriage, so...
I also suppose I should avoid reading authors' own ideas about what their work is about, because in the "On Writing Familiar" at the end of the book, Lennon states that the book is about how parenthood changes you. Not at all what I took away from it, and kind of a disappointing summary of everything that goes on in this complicated novel.
To me it was more about one woman's journey, about identity, about how two different choices made in one point in time may play out drastically differently down the line, about the different people we could become, about the complications in any relationship, and even some cool metaphysical ideas about memory and reality.
The very last two pages however felt very oddly wrapped up to me, where Lennon goes from describing an intense scene in the present to just summing up for the reader everything that happens in the next few years within in a matter of paragraphs. Almost as if he couldn't figure out how to end the book (and I know endings are hard) and didn't want to leave the reader hanging, but didn't want to write out the rest of the events either.
I also suppose I should avoid reading authors' own ideas about what their work is about, because in the "On Writing Familiar" at the end of the book, Lennon states that the book is about how parenthood changes you. Not at all what I took away from it, and kind of a disappointing summary of everything that goes on in this complicated novel.
To me it was more about one woman's journey, about identity, about how two different choices made in one point in time may play out drastically differently down the line, about the different people we could become, about the complications in any relationship, and even some cool metaphysical ideas about memory and reality.
The very last two pages however felt very oddly wrapped up to me, where Lennon goes from describing an intense scene in the present to just summing up for the reader everything that happens in the next few years within in a matter of paragraphs. Almost as if he couldn't figure out how to end the book (and I know endings are hard) and didn't want to leave the reader hanging, but didn't want to write out the rest of the events either.
November 25, 2012
I've read and enjoyed all of Lennon's novels for the past fifteen years, and I still can't quite figure out what it is that I find so appealing about them. His work is unconventional without being showy, and has grown increasingly strange in his last two novels. In an afterword to "Familiar", he describes the early draft as "restrained", "taut" and "edgy". Instead, it became a novel about the "psychological effects of parenthood".
It's a chilling account of a family that has completely malfunctioned. The parents are utterly detached from their children and each other. The underlying hostility is so disturbing and heartbreaking that I found it difficult to read at times, and had to wonder how Lennon could bear to write it. Very good, very sad. Feeling rather depressed now, comforting myself with the fact that I don't have kids.
It's a chilling account of a family that has completely malfunctioned. The parents are utterly detached from their children and each other. The underlying hostility is so disturbing and heartbreaking that I found it difficult to read at times, and had to wonder how Lennon could bear to write it. Very good, very sad. Feeling rather depressed now, comforting myself with the fact that I don't have kids.
December 4, 2012
If you want a book that starts out fantastically and really draws you in and keeps you turning the pages all the way through, only to summarily STOP without warning, Familiar is your book. I wanted to throw it through the window because I was so disappointed in the non-ending.
February 26, 2013
What a waste of time this book was. I was half way through and couldn't decide whether or not to finish it. I wish that I hadn't. The ending is totally unsatisfying, the characters unlikeable and the plot drags on. Can't remember whatever made me decide to read this book, but I must have been in a parallel universe at the time.
December 17, 2015
Elisa Brown is driving when suddenly the crack in the windshield disappears, her body is slightly different, she is wearing different clothes, she is driving a new car. She arrives home and her life is looks familiar, but it’s not. For once, his son Silas is not dead anymore.
You’ll agree with me that this is a really intriguing and promising premise and obviously, it was what draw me to this book. Has Elisa entered a parallel universe? Gone crazy and invented another reality? Elisa attempts to answer this question throughout the book but the book isn’t here to answer them. It seems like the whole premise is a macguffin to explore the life of Elisa and her family. I wouldn’t considered this a sci-fi book but a middle-life-crisis-book or whatever.
I kept waiting for the book to get to the good part, to hook me, but it didn’t happen. The exposition of Elisa’s new life feel pointless. If she was supposed to learn anything in this alternate universe or whatever, I didn’t catch it. And the whole ending was a bit weird. That Patrice character seemed to out of place and this is not precisely a conventional story.
I mean, now that I think about it, the book left me indifferent and that’s not a god thing.
P.S.: I just thought of a book with a "similar" premise that also examined our choices in life and how we have become and I unlike this, I found extremely engaging: Replay, by Ken Grimwood.
Edit: this is definitely the dissapointment of the year so I'm downgrading to one star.
You’ll agree with me that this is a really intriguing and promising premise and obviously, it was what draw me to this book. Has Elisa entered a parallel universe? Gone crazy and invented another reality? Elisa attempts to answer this question throughout the book but the book isn’t here to answer them. It seems like the whole premise is a macguffin to explore the life of Elisa and her family. I wouldn’t considered this a sci-fi book but a middle-life-crisis-book or whatever.
I kept waiting for the book to get to the good part, to hook me, but it didn’t happen. The exposition of Elisa’s new life feel pointless. If she was supposed to learn anything in this alternate universe or whatever, I didn’t catch it. And the whole ending was a bit weird. That Patrice character seemed to out of place and this is not precisely a conventional story.
I mean, now that I think about it, the book left me indifferent and that’s not a god thing.
P.S.: I just thought of a book with a "similar" premise that also examined our choices in life and how we have become and I unlike this, I found extremely engaging: Replay, by Ken Grimwood.
Edit: this is definitely the dissapointment of the year so I'm downgrading to one star.
December 21, 2012
Couldn't put this one down. I never did decide whether Elisa really slipped into a parallel universe or had a psychotic break but in the end that seemed less important than how she fought her way back from either situation. Everyone in the book had a skewed perception of reality -- tilted by drugs, or alcohol, or religion, or science, or sex, or therapy, or a participation in a virtual world. Unlike Elisa their perceptions appeared to be coupled with a smugness borne of certainty. She was a very acceptable heroine -- terrified and full of self-doubt but tenaciously moving forward. Scary to consider, however, that whatever choices you make (in this universe anyway) you might end up in the same place.
May 2, 2014
Do you like endings where things are actually explained? Where it seems like the right place to end it? If so, this book is not for you (or me).
I liked the sci-fi feel when Lisa finds herself different but the same - in fact, it seemed pretty original. Instead of a Freaky Friday move where she is in another persons body, she is herself - but heavier, different clothes, car, haircut. As if her life just took a different path years ago. But then the story just failed to live up to that premise. There is a lot of wandering around, Lisa trying to piece things together, figure out how she feels about this alternate life. But so what? There are some good questions posed about why our lives turn out the way we do, but the book just fritters it away.
I liked the sci-fi feel when Lisa finds herself different but the same - in fact, it seemed pretty original. Instead of a Freaky Friday move where she is in another persons body, she is herself - but heavier, different clothes, car, haircut. As if her life just took a different path years ago. But then the story just failed to live up to that premise. There is a lot of wandering around, Lisa trying to piece things together, figure out how she feels about this alternate life. But so what? There are some good questions posed about why our lives turn out the way we do, but the book just fritters it away.
February 2, 2013
I got to the end of this and thought wtf? I felt exactly the same way when the tv went black on Tony Soprano. I hate it when that happens. If you don't need your stories to be satisfying, this is for you. I am not sure what this is about exactly, even after reading the whole darn thing, so I can't really give it much of a review. I think it says something about being alone and cut off from the people in your life no matter what body you inhabit or what the general plot lines of your life are. That's the story in a nutshell. I am disappointed I did not see it as a thoughtful treatment of memory as I hoped I would.
July 31, 2013
Really really enjoyed this book. I would describe it as an "existentialist" novel - the protagonist finds herself in a second chance at her crumbling life and has to choose whether to carry on in carefully constructed happiness or to scratch the surface and try to satisfy her thirst for answers.
Raises great questions - if you had the chance to do it all over again, would you do it better or would you make the same mistakes? Do we make our lives or do our lives make us? What do you owe to other people vs. what do you owe to yourself? How do you decide what to sacrifice?
Highly recommended.
Raises great questions - if you had the chance to do it all over again, would you do it better or would you make the same mistakes? Do we make our lives or do our lives make us? What do you owe to other people vs. what do you owe to yourself? How do you decide what to sacrifice?
Highly recommended.
November 9, 2018
This was pretty darn good. Until the end. Seriously?? What the heck??
October 2, 2012
from publisher / signed by author
Read 9/24/12 - 9/29/12
4.5 Stars - Highly Recommended to fans of never-knowing-where-the-story-is-going who enjoy that through-the-looking-glass feeling
Pgs: 208
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Release Date: Today!!
What good is a second chance if you aren't going to take advantage of it?
In J. Robert Lennon's Familiar, Elisa finds herself driving home from her youngest son's grave when everything suddenly changes - her car is different, her clothes are different, her body is different. Pulling into the driveway, her husband comes out to greet her and even he appears different. Yet everything seems so... familiar.
She soon discovers that in this reality, she and her husband are struggling to stay together while both of her sons are alive, though estranged from them. Unsure whether she's slipped into a parallel universe or losing her mind, Elisa tries to acclimate herself to this new life as best as she can while attempting to make it as similar to her old life as possible.
Lennon's got a knack for fucking with my mind. I'm going to just put that right out there. When I had listened to Castle on audio, I tried like hell to guess where the story was going to end up. And every time I thought I had it nailed down, he threw another curve ball and left me standing in the dark, scratching my head. Things were no different with Familiar. As Lennon allowed Elisa to fall further and further into his rabbit-hole, I realized that I was less and less certain of what was taking place. Was Elisa really living in some mirror-version of her old life? If I found myself leaning that way, Lennon would do something that made me ask if she suffering a nervous breakdown instead and losing touch with reality. Would she ever find her way back to the life she left behind, and did she even want to? As Elisa memories from the old life started to merge and blend with those of the new, and she began questioning her sanity... I decided to simply let the story take me where it wanted.
It's a book that means to get inside your head and nestle down in there, nice and cozy-like. The characters are deliciously flawed, the situations they put themselves in are sometimes maddeningly robotic, and with each turn of the page, you're forced to ask yourself "what if this were happening to me"....
Though Lennon gives good suspense, he continues to leave me aching for more with his endings. With Castle, I found it sort of frustrating. Now, with Familiar, I think I'm starting to see what he's up to. Why put a nice little bow on things when you can make the reader do a little post-read homework, right? In this way, the story doesn't end with the final sentence of the book. It continues to breathe and expand as you chew on it...
Read 9/24/12 - 9/29/12
4.5 Stars - Highly Recommended to fans of never-knowing-where-the-story-is-going who enjoy that through-the-looking-glass feeling
Pgs: 208
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Release Date: Today!!
What good is a second chance if you aren't going to take advantage of it?
In J. Robert Lennon's Familiar, Elisa finds herself driving home from her youngest son's grave when everything suddenly changes - her car is different, her clothes are different, her body is different. Pulling into the driveway, her husband comes out to greet her and even he appears different. Yet everything seems so... familiar.
She soon discovers that in this reality, she and her husband are struggling to stay together while both of her sons are alive, though estranged from them. Unsure whether she's slipped into a parallel universe or losing her mind, Elisa tries to acclimate herself to this new life as best as she can while attempting to make it as similar to her old life as possible.
Lennon's got a knack for fucking with my mind. I'm going to just put that right out there. When I had listened to Castle on audio, I tried like hell to guess where the story was going to end up. And every time I thought I had it nailed down, he threw another curve ball and left me standing in the dark, scratching my head. Things were no different with Familiar. As Lennon allowed Elisa to fall further and further into his rabbit-hole, I realized that I was less and less certain of what was taking place. Was Elisa really living in some mirror-version of her old life? If I found myself leaning that way, Lennon would do something that made me ask if she suffering a nervous breakdown instead and losing touch with reality. Would she ever find her way back to the life she left behind, and did she even want to? As Elisa memories from the old life started to merge and blend with those of the new, and she began questioning her sanity... I decided to simply let the story take me where it wanted.
It's a book that means to get inside your head and nestle down in there, nice and cozy-like. The characters are deliciously flawed, the situations they put themselves in are sometimes maddeningly robotic, and with each turn of the page, you're forced to ask yourself "what if this were happening to me"....
Though Lennon gives good suspense, he continues to leave me aching for more with his endings. With Castle, I found it sort of frustrating. Now, with Familiar, I think I'm starting to see what he's up to. Why put a nice little bow on things when you can make the reader do a little post-read homework, right? In this way, the story doesn't end with the final sentence of the book. It continues to breathe and expand as you chew on it...
February 11, 2013
“Familiar” uses the conceit of what appears to be an alternate reality to explore a middle aged woman’s regrets and disappointments. The alternate reality device is a crack in a windshield that alters Elisa Brown’s perception of her life during a business trip. It may be that she’s crossed some sort of rift between universes, or (more prosaically) she’s having a nervous breakdown. Whichever it is, she’s thrown into a life different from the one that she’s been used to for the last 45 years.
Author Robert Lennon gives us more than one way of viewing the cause of what’s happening to Elisa. One is supernatural, the other not. As far as the story’s concerned, it doesn’t really mater what the answer is. What’s important is that her new circumstances force Elisa to carefully reexamine fateful choices and accidental occurrences in her life. These include her career choices, her relationship to her husband and her children, all of which are quite different in the “new” life she finds herself living.
In the course of watching Elisa navigate a different life, “Familiar” covers a wide span of topics, including unhappy marriages and infidelity, couples therapy, dysfunctional families, spiteful, ungrateful children, body self-image, wish fulfillment, video games, internet culture, sci-fi conventions, and the differences between what is real and imagined in everyday life. Lennon’s covering a lot (and I mean a lot) of ground here, especially considering that “Familiar” clocks in at a relatively brief 225 pages.
I think he pulls it off. Elisa’s character is well developed, complex and feels quite substantial. The emotional turmoil that her alternate timeline forces her to confront is painful and sometimes bleak, not unlike real life for those of us stuck in a single timeline. And while parts of the book dealing with her estrangement from her horribly screwed up sons verged on depressing, the author kept me engaged with a steady stream of dense character dialogue and forward movement. A warning, though, the book’s themes are far more likely to resonate with an older reader with some life experience under her belt. Less so for a younger reader who’s hoping for a Matrix-like exploration of alternate realities.
Author Robert Lennon gives us more than one way of viewing the cause of what’s happening to Elisa. One is supernatural, the other not. As far as the story’s concerned, it doesn’t really mater what the answer is. What’s important is that her new circumstances force Elisa to carefully reexamine fateful choices and accidental occurrences in her life. These include her career choices, her relationship to her husband and her children, all of which are quite different in the “new” life she finds herself living.
In the course of watching Elisa navigate a different life, “Familiar” covers a wide span of topics, including unhappy marriages and infidelity, couples therapy, dysfunctional families, spiteful, ungrateful children, body self-image, wish fulfillment, video games, internet culture, sci-fi conventions, and the differences between what is real and imagined in everyday life. Lennon’s covering a lot (and I mean a lot) of ground here, especially considering that “Familiar” clocks in at a relatively brief 225 pages.
I think he pulls it off. Elisa’s character is well developed, complex and feels quite substantial. The emotional turmoil that her alternate timeline forces her to confront is painful and sometimes bleak, not unlike real life for those of us stuck in a single timeline. And while parts of the book dealing with her estrangement from her horribly screwed up sons verged on depressing, the author kept me engaged with a steady stream of dense character dialogue and forward movement. A warning, though, the book’s themes are far more likely to resonate with an older reader with some life experience under her belt. Less so for a younger reader who’s hoping for a Matrix-like exploration of alternate realities.
November 15, 2012
Four and a half stars.
A literary novel written with the crisp tempo of genre, Familiar mines the world of weird science fiction for its ability to defamiliarize the truisms of parenthood and relationships and highlight the inherent strangeness of it. Like looking in a mirror and not recognizing yourself, Elisa finds herself in a parallel world and struggling to makes sense of the familiar, which has become strange. Given over to a life where the things that made her sad (the death of her son Silas, her relationship with her other son Sam and her husband Derek) have been significantly changed, but the resulting confusion brings no relief.
Ultimately, I see this book as conveying the experience of the futility of wishing for a different life, for a different series of events—like Candide living in the best of all possible worlds—Elisa finds that all choices, all branching paths have their own pitfalls and disappointments. Foremost in this realization is the inevitable failures that comes with parenting (a main focus of the book)—the inability to ever be the best parent you can be or imagine yourself being, the terror of your own children becoming monsters you are responsible for and that forever change your life and your relationship with your partner and to the world.
This is a sad book. Lennon's writing conveys a sense of drowning in one's own life, of agency without agency through his depiction of a the simultaneous possibility and impossibility of change.
The video game parallel set up in the book is really strong in conveying this, b/c much like many narrative video games, all choices lead to the same narrow set of possible conclusions. It is for this reason that the conclusion of Familiar itself is unimportant. . . instead it is about the experience of being in strangeness. Similarly, Elisa's involvement in online forum communities depicts the simultaneity of lives or personas, made different, but remaining the same—constructable but from the same limited pool of resources.
I loved this book, but damn did it resonate with my fears of becoming a parent.
A literary novel written with the crisp tempo of genre, Familiar mines the world of weird science fiction for its ability to defamiliarize the truisms of parenthood and relationships and highlight the inherent strangeness of it. Like looking in a mirror and not recognizing yourself, Elisa finds herself in a parallel world and struggling to makes sense of the familiar, which has become strange. Given over to a life where the things that made her sad (the death of her son Silas, her relationship with her other son Sam and her husband Derek) have been significantly changed, but the resulting confusion brings no relief.
Ultimately, I see this book as conveying the experience of the futility of wishing for a different life, for a different series of events—like Candide living in the best of all possible worlds—Elisa finds that all choices, all branching paths have their own pitfalls and disappointments. Foremost in this realization is the inevitable failures that comes with parenting (a main focus of the book)—the inability to ever be the best parent you can be or imagine yourself being, the terror of your own children becoming monsters you are responsible for and that forever change your life and your relationship with your partner and to the world.
This is a sad book. Lennon's writing conveys a sense of drowning in one's own life, of agency without agency through his depiction of a the simultaneous possibility and impossibility of change.
The video game parallel set up in the book is really strong in conveying this, b/c much like many narrative video games, all choices lead to the same narrow set of possible conclusions. It is for this reason that the conclusion of Familiar itself is unimportant. . . instead it is about the experience of being in strangeness. Similarly, Elisa's involvement in online forum communities depicts the simultaneity of lives or personas, made different, but remaining the same—constructable but from the same limited pool of resources.
I loved this book, but damn did it resonate with my fears of becoming a parent.
February 22, 2015
Good premise solidly executed, but I would have rated it higher, I think, if it was a short story or novella.
March 18, 2017
If there was a point, I definitely missed it. Why did I read this?
July 29, 2024
I’m reeling from this and expect I will be for quite some time. We (and in particular parents) really can’t ever get it right, can we? All we can do is the best that we can now, and now, and now.
August 19, 2019
Remember those "Can You Spot The Differences" puzzles?
In FAMILIAR, protagonist Elisa (a 40-something married lady) suddenly finds herself in a very sobering real-world version of this.
Is Elisa mentally unstable? Brain-damaged? An unreliable narrator? A victim of something extraordinary? Ha! Read and decide for yourself.
Though somewhat marred by , this was an interesting and unique book. It's no fast-paced thriller or SciFi extravaganza, but instead a slightly off-kilter, what-the-heck-is-really-happening tale.
I wouldn't call it disturbing or uncomfortable at all, but your mileage may vary as you spend time inside Elisa's head. It was intriguing at times, and there were some phrases that stuck with me.
Some readers might find one or more characters here unlikeable and/or hard to identify with. Such things are not a problem for me -- as long as the characters are interesting, imperfectly human, and mostly realistic-ish.
VERDICT: 4.1 stars. Not the absolute best book I've read this year, but in the top 5 oddly interesting ones. I liked the concept here, as well as the different writing style. It's the kind of book I can recommend to lovers of speculative fiction who don't need everything spelled out, but some things left nebulous.
In FAMILIAR, protagonist Elisa (a 40-something married lady) suddenly finds herself in a very sobering real-world version of this.
Is Elisa mentally unstable? Brain-damaged? An unreliable narrator? A victim of something extraordinary? Ha! Read and decide for yourself.
Though somewhat marred by , this was an interesting and unique book. It's no fast-paced thriller or SciFi extravaganza, but instead a slightly off-kilter, what-the-heck-is-really-happening tale.
I wouldn't call it disturbing or uncomfortable at all, but your mileage may vary as you spend time inside Elisa's head. It was intriguing at times, and there were some phrases that stuck with me.
Some readers might find one or more characters here unlikeable and/or hard to identify with. Such things are not a problem for me -- as long as the characters are interesting, imperfectly human, and mostly realistic-ish.
VERDICT: 4.1 stars. Not the absolute best book I've read this year, but in the top 5 oddly interesting ones. I liked the concept here, as well as the different writing style. It's the kind of book I can recommend to lovers of speculative fiction who don't need everything spelled out, but some things left nebulous.
January 27, 2016
Every once in a while you stumble across something new and exhilarating. It might be a new band, or new actress or, as in this case an author. J. Robert Lennon (an unforgettable surname if not a little distracting) is one such example. His writing, judging by this his seventh novel is near to remarkable. The story is too.
There's a crack in the windscreen. It runs from the lower left hand corner to a spot near the passenger side at eye level. The car is being driven by Elisa Macalester Brown. The car smells of dog. Elisa is married to Derek, has one son still alive, Sam, and one who died a decade or so ago. Her life is not a happy one. She and husband Derek no longer get along. Both of them are having affairs.
There's a crack in the windshield. The crack is gone as though it never was there. The car no longer smells of dog, it smells of new plastic and has aircon.; it is in fact another car, a different model entirely. Elisa is no longer slim and trim but plump and a little matronly. Life has changed in subtle but obvious ways. Her dead son still lives. Neither she nor Derek are having affairs. Life is as hunky dory, or so it seems, as a life could be. This is a story that would suit lovers of Memento.
It is fractured yet remains linear. It is not a thriller and yet is has the same itchy scalp feel. The narrative is taut and fraught. It is as much about parallel worlds as it is about psychosis as it is about family breakdown. The tension is like piano wire wrapped around your neck or like a drug you take which at first brings unbelievable pleasure, a hint of hallucinatory joy before it starts to decay as delightful dream drifts into nightmare.
Lennon writes with confidence drawing unraveling threads together before fraying the ends. The story portrays Elisa in clearly defined detail. Other characters are created fully formed with believable traits and mannerisms but it is Elisa, Liisa that is the mainstay, the key to all that happens, the rip in reality by which we witness that same reality spin away. The pacing is superb. Like a long distance runner Lennon keeps stretching the tension, jostling the story along and then, as we enter the final sixty pages pushes away from the pack and tightens control, pushes the story up by several notches until you the reader find themselves turning the pages with greater urgency. The finale is a schizophrenic orgy. Not since Peter Ackroyd's brilliant thriller 'Hawksmoor' have I read anything so willfully psychotic.
April 10, 2017
I loved Familiar by J. Robert Lennon. Something about it really resonated with me. It has a great premise. And then it's excellent all the way through. The copy I read has so many flagged sticky notes because I loved so many lines and passages. I really loved Lennon's writing.
In Familiar, Elisa Brown is a middle-aged woman driving back home from Wisconsin to New York. She's on her way back from her yearly pilgrimage to her son, Silas's grave. Silas died eight years ago, when he was fifteen-years-old. Elisa is just going along the highway when all of a sudden, everything is different. She's heavier. She's driving a different car. Her clothes are different. And when Elisa reaches her home, she comes to find that her whole life is different. She has a different job, her marriage is different, her living son Sam is no longer speaking to her, and the biggest difference of all is that Silas never died. As Elisa tries to adjust to this alternate life she's been dropped into, she grapples with questions like, is she having a breakdown or has she entered a parallel universe? Did all this happen for a reason or was it just random chance?
Elisa's search for answers and her search for identity make for an intriguing story and a compelling character study. This novel is an excellent portrait of the interior life of a woman, and her struggle to maintain her identity within marriage and motherhood. In this way, Familiar reminded me of one of my favorite novels, Hausfrau. In some ways, it also reminded me of Version Control, another favorite of mine.
The characterizations in Familiar are great all around, whether they're in Elisa's remembered past or the new life she finds herself in. This story poses a lot of fascinating questions and makes many astute observations. I loved the multiverse/parallel universe theories discussed within the novel. The feeling of unreality evoked in Familiar is cool and mysterious. It's also just a really great story about parenting and family and relationships.
I really recommend Familiar. Read it if you want something original, exciting yet also reflective, and a story that's beautifully written. This is a thought-provoking book written by a consummately skilled writer. I can't wait to read more by J. Robert Lennon.
In Familiar, Elisa Brown is a middle-aged woman driving back home from Wisconsin to New York. She's on her way back from her yearly pilgrimage to her son, Silas's grave. Silas died eight years ago, when he was fifteen-years-old. Elisa is just going along the highway when all of a sudden, everything is different. She's heavier. She's driving a different car. Her clothes are different. And when Elisa reaches her home, she comes to find that her whole life is different. She has a different job, her marriage is different, her living son Sam is no longer speaking to her, and the biggest difference of all is that Silas never died. As Elisa tries to adjust to this alternate life she's been dropped into, she grapples with questions like, is she having a breakdown or has she entered a parallel universe? Did all this happen for a reason or was it just random chance?
Elisa's search for answers and her search for identity make for an intriguing story and a compelling character study. This novel is an excellent portrait of the interior life of a woman, and her struggle to maintain her identity within marriage and motherhood. In this way, Familiar reminded me of one of my favorite novels, Hausfrau. In some ways, it also reminded me of Version Control, another favorite of mine.
The characterizations in Familiar are great all around, whether they're in Elisa's remembered past or the new life she finds herself in. This story poses a lot of fascinating questions and makes many astute observations. I loved the multiverse/parallel universe theories discussed within the novel. The feeling of unreality evoked in Familiar is cool and mysterious. It's also just a really great story about parenting and family and relationships.
I really recommend Familiar. Read it if you want something original, exciting yet also reflective, and a story that's beautifully written. This is a thought-provoking book written by a consummately skilled writer. I can't wait to read more by J. Robert Lennon.
May 16, 2022
Actually, three-and-a-half. The book engaged me intellectually, and I liked the way Lennon played around with the idea of how a life not lived could be pretty close to one that's lived. (Not trying to be vague, but readers ought not to have a book's surprises ruined for them.) There's much about identity (what makes us who we are, and do we even know who we are?) and reality (is there anything we can agree on that's real?), with a bit of metatextuality thrown in. A satisfying read.
May 29, 2018
This goes straight into my top 10 ever books. Loved it despite the characters being flawed and quite frankly unlikeable at times. Loved it even though it has one of those endings where you turn the page excited to read on and you’re staring at a blank page and left to make you’re own mind up about what happened. Loved it
December 26, 2012
Great setup, compelling and often insightful prose, squandered premise. A fast read, but I would have gladly spent another 3-5 days in this world if only it went somewhere definitive.
January 3, 2021
I was quite intrigued by the premise of this novel, and after a slow start was really enjoying it, despite my lack of affection for most of the characters. Then, with 3 chapters to go, it was like the writer got bored and handed it to a Sci-fi wannabe writer mate, saying ‘I’m done with this, you can finish it’. An altogether unsatisfying end, and in fact, I couldn’t even tell you what those last 3 chapters even were. The book closed on being flung across the room like a frisbee, as ‘pffft’ escaped my lips. So I’m pretending it ended 3 chapters in and I’ll let my imagination decide what I might have done next, had the character been me. So 3 stars to there. Maybe there was some deep hidden meaning g in those last 3 chapters? And maybe I just didn’t care enough to spot them.
April 21, 2018
Judging by the reviews I’ve read, this is a real marmite book- most people either loving or hating it. I fall in-between. I feel that the whole idea of Elisa having slipped into a parallel universe is a totally unnecessary conceit. For a time, it’s interesting to see how she struggles to adapt to her new self and new life but then it started to pall, especially the frankly unconvincing bits like the ease with which she copes with her ‘new ‘, very demanding job. All of this just serves to over complicate the basic story of a dis functional family and the estrangement of parents from their children.
November 28, 2012
When Elisa suddenly slips into a parallel world where her teenage son has not died ten years previously and is now an adult who is estranged from her, you might think, as I did at first, that this is going to be a book like The Intuitionist or The City and the City, where the world of the novel is at a slight angle to our own, and the rules governing our reality are ever so gently bent, a kind of suburban magical realism.
But Elisa spends the entire story trying to figure out the rules of her new parallel world, where she must pretend that she hasn't just arrived and that she has been living here all along. This makes Lennon's book very different from those other novels, where it is the reader, not the protagonist, who must figure out the rules while the characters casually go about their business. Elisa's story is very explicitly about the principles governing world-building. Our puzzlement is hers.
Lennon largely resists the temptation to make this a meta-fictional novel that comments on itself, and there is no authorial hand reaching in from above (though a book called Familiar does briefly appear at the end). Instead, Elisa goes searching for a paradigm to help explain what has happened to her. She considers video-game design (her not-dead son's profession), talk therapy, science fiction, and physics with its theory of the multiverse. Elisa is herself a scientist, a plant biologist who has become a university administrator. Her mind is orderly and rational, and she is determined to find a true explanation for the impossibility--the fictionality--that has just erupted in her life.
Marco Roth in the journal n+1 has written about the recent trend in contemporary literary fiction for protagonists with faulty brains. He calls them "neuronovels," and sees them as the 21st-century heirs to early 20th-century modernist "stream of consciousness" novels, in which neuroscience has been given all the explanatory power for altered perception and heightened language. Roth deplores this turn to the materialist and wonders why novelists have ceded so much ground to science.
Lennon's book happens to rebut Roth quite neatly. Something is gravely wrong with Elisa--either in her mind with her perception of reality or with the quantum particles of her entire world--but she is not otherwise different from us. Perhaps if Roth had written this book, Elisa would run right to the library to read "The Metamorphosis." But applying science rather than, say, literature to her problem proliferates Lennon's story, instead of neatly reducing and resolving it as Roth fears. Science happens to contain exactly as many stories as psychology (i.e. an infinite amount).
Lest I leave you with the impression that this is a cold exercise in problem-solving, I hasten to add that the book contains a beating heart as well as a faulty brain. Elisa must figure out how to relate to her family in this new world, her husband and surviving son, as well as the son that died in her old world but has reappeared to her. And he is not okay. It is affecting and haunting.
If you like Tom McCarthy's Remainder, read this book. I suspect John Fowles' The Magus is somewhere in this book's ancestry. Right now I'm reading The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, which J. Robert Lennon recommended at his book reading here in Ithaca.
But Elisa spends the entire story trying to figure out the rules of her new parallel world, where she must pretend that she hasn't just arrived and that she has been living here all along. This makes Lennon's book very different from those other novels, where it is the reader, not the protagonist, who must figure out the rules while the characters casually go about their business. Elisa's story is very explicitly about the principles governing world-building. Our puzzlement is hers.
Lennon largely resists the temptation to make this a meta-fictional novel that comments on itself, and there is no authorial hand reaching in from above (though a book called Familiar does briefly appear at the end). Instead, Elisa goes searching for a paradigm to help explain what has happened to her. She considers video-game design (her not-dead son's profession), talk therapy, science fiction, and physics with its theory of the multiverse. Elisa is herself a scientist, a plant biologist who has become a university administrator. Her mind is orderly and rational, and she is determined to find a true explanation for the impossibility--the fictionality--that has just erupted in her life.
Marco Roth in the journal n+1 has written about the recent trend in contemporary literary fiction for protagonists with faulty brains. He calls them "neuronovels," and sees them as the 21st-century heirs to early 20th-century modernist "stream of consciousness" novels, in which neuroscience has been given all the explanatory power for altered perception and heightened language. Roth deplores this turn to the materialist and wonders why novelists have ceded so much ground to science.
Lennon's book happens to rebut Roth quite neatly. Something is gravely wrong with Elisa--either in her mind with her perception of reality or with the quantum particles of her entire world--but she is not otherwise different from us. Perhaps if Roth had written this book, Elisa would run right to the library to read "The Metamorphosis." But applying science rather than, say, literature to her problem proliferates Lennon's story, instead of neatly reducing and resolving it as Roth fears. Science happens to contain exactly as many stories as psychology (i.e. an infinite amount).
Lest I leave you with the impression that this is a cold exercise in problem-solving, I hasten to add that the book contains a beating heart as well as a faulty brain. Elisa must figure out how to relate to her family in this new world, her husband and surviving son, as well as the son that died in her old world but has reappeared to her. And he is not okay. It is affecting and haunting.
If you like Tom McCarthy's Remainder, read this book. I suspect John Fowles' The Magus is somewhere in this book's ancestry. Right now I'm reading The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, which J. Robert Lennon recommended at his book reading here in Ithaca.
July 25, 2016
One minute she’s all zoney bologna, entranced by a crack in her windshield while she cruises down the highway after a visit to her son’s out-of-state, heck out-of-tri-state, grave and a blink later, the crack is gone and Elisa doesn’t recognize the body currently housing her person. Or her car. Or the contents of her purse.
J. Robert Lennon’s sorta sci/fi novel “Familiar” presents a character with two sons, one dead and the other so beaten down by the former that he’s kinda just a walking, shaking ball of neurosis. Things with her husband are terrible; Things with her boyfriend are decent. Every year, bout this time, she returns to Wisconsin to visit Silas’s grave. When she becomes a parallel universe version of herself, she’s got the length of the car ride to get her shit together so she can convincingly play the role of herself when she gets home.
New Elisa is rounder. Her husband is kinder, but it turns out that he is just trying extra hard because they are in couples therapy. She’s got a different job on the same campus and she’s even got a friend. Turns out she wasn’t kneeling at a grave, she was at a work conference. She’s got a tender relationship with her mother-in-law and she’s never met her boyfriend, she determines after a recon trip to his frame shop.
The knockout punch, though, is a family photograph that catches her eye as she and Husband 2.0 adjourn to the bedroom for some post-trip nakey time: Silas. In the photo he’s aged beyond the point where he died in the original version of herself. In this world, he’s still alive.
Elisa must figure out how to negotiate this new world, new job, new set of relationship rules. Part of this involves stalking her sons, from whom she has become estranged. Truth: Both versions of Elisa are monstrous.
Elisa is stuck in one of those literary situations that occur in YA and magical realism: She has no one to confide in. Her situation is too unbelievable to anyone who hasn’t been reading from Page 1. The logical resource, her husband, believes she is not herself. But It’s easy to reason that if she did confess her predicament to him, he would assume it was a ploy to deflect intimacy and he would narc her out to their therapist. It’s doubtful that her new best friend could stop the chatter long enough to listen to Elisa’s tale.
As a reader, you wait for the person with an open mind and kind eyes to enter stage left. Elisa gets that, with messy results, and ultimately finds herself swapping deets with anonymous posters on a bulletin board dedicated to parallel universes and the like. You also look for clues to what is going on and whether it will be reversed. Elisa hypothesizes that the other her is now in a similarly confusing situation, living in her old life and that presents another theory. Her therapist tells her that she’s had episodes in the past, she’s been hospitalized even, and that this looks like one of those. Meanwhile, in the background, this all smacks of something that Silas, a video game guru, would invent.
This book is filled with all sorts of ooky what-thes and strange what-ifs and readers who need an aha moment should look elsewhere. Readers who always sort of assume there is something a little sci-fi-y going on beneath the layers will feel right at home.
J. Robert Lennon’s sorta sci/fi novel “Familiar” presents a character with two sons, one dead and the other so beaten down by the former that he’s kinda just a walking, shaking ball of neurosis. Things with her husband are terrible; Things with her boyfriend are decent. Every year, bout this time, she returns to Wisconsin to visit Silas’s grave. When she becomes a parallel universe version of herself, she’s got the length of the car ride to get her shit together so she can convincingly play the role of herself when she gets home.
New Elisa is rounder. Her husband is kinder, but it turns out that he is just trying extra hard because they are in couples therapy. She’s got a different job on the same campus and she’s even got a friend. Turns out she wasn’t kneeling at a grave, she was at a work conference. She’s got a tender relationship with her mother-in-law and she’s never met her boyfriend, she determines after a recon trip to his frame shop.
The knockout punch, though, is a family photograph that catches her eye as she and Husband 2.0 adjourn to the bedroom for some post-trip nakey time: Silas. In the photo he’s aged beyond the point where he died in the original version of herself. In this world, he’s still alive.
Elisa must figure out how to negotiate this new world, new job, new set of relationship rules. Part of this involves stalking her sons, from whom she has become estranged. Truth: Both versions of Elisa are monstrous.
Elisa is stuck in one of those literary situations that occur in YA and magical realism: She has no one to confide in. Her situation is too unbelievable to anyone who hasn’t been reading from Page 1. The logical resource, her husband, believes she is not herself. But It’s easy to reason that if she did confess her predicament to him, he would assume it was a ploy to deflect intimacy and he would narc her out to their therapist. It’s doubtful that her new best friend could stop the chatter long enough to listen to Elisa’s tale.
As a reader, you wait for the person with an open mind and kind eyes to enter stage left. Elisa gets that, with messy results, and ultimately finds herself swapping deets with anonymous posters on a bulletin board dedicated to parallel universes and the like. You also look for clues to what is going on and whether it will be reversed. Elisa hypothesizes that the other her is now in a similarly confusing situation, living in her old life and that presents another theory. Her therapist tells her that she’s had episodes in the past, she’s been hospitalized even, and that this looks like one of those. Meanwhile, in the background, this all smacks of something that Silas, a video game guru, would invent.
This book is filled with all sorts of ooky what-thes and strange what-ifs and readers who need an aha moment should look elsewhere. Readers who always sort of assume there is something a little sci-fi-y going on beneath the layers will feel right at home.
January 20, 2014
Thank fucking jesus, finally, a modern page-turner that I loved reading. This was a ripper. I read a book called 'The Light Of Falling Stars' by this same dude a few years ago, and though I barely remember any of it (plane crash, survivor) I remember really liking it, so decided to give his latest a crack and I'm happy that I did. I read it in a day, because my missus, Andromeda, is a week overdue with our baby no.2 and all we can do is sit around and wait. She's been watching Ellen, Australia's Biggest Loser and some other reality show where northern English people have sex, and I've been watching cricket and reading books. I have so much time on my hands I've even been watching Big Bash (an aside: I am barracking for Hobart because there are two Melbourne teams, both called 'Melbourne', which is fucking spastic - couldn't one be called 'Victoria?' or 'Yarra' or some other form of differentiation?).
But the book... so this woman called Elisa, late 40's, is driving home from interstate after visiting her son's grave - he died about 10 years ago, when he was 15 - and suddenly, she's in a different car, in different clothes, with a different body (fatter) and she gets home and she has a different job, different friends and her son is alive. Parallel universe? That's what she thinks, and she investigates. It's a mystery novel of sorts, but the real clue, I found, was in one line in chapter 21 - "Her thoughts have always been more interesting to her than the world itself." Much earlier in the novel we become well acquainted with her vivid fantasies (she re-imagines petty disputes she used to have with a college room-mate, but in her re-imagining, they are violent and mixed up with current affairs) and so from my reading, one of the worlds she is/was in is real, the other a vivid fantasy. Which is the real one? Who cares? It's brilliant.
It reminds me of Sartre's comment that he finds ideas more real than things - in his excellent book 'Words' he says, "In the zoo, monkeys were less like monkeys" - as in, compared to what he thought of monkeys by reading about them and looking at them in books. I have always been attracted to Sartre because of this. I feel the same way. I got to the Parthenon in Athens and it was a lesser place than the Parthenon of my mind. I have fond memories of both Parthenons. So this book made perfect sense to me. Which is more real? Neither, in the end. A vivid fantasy is just that: vivid, and real life is not always so vivid. I can easily live in both worlds, and this is a novel that takes that concept further. On top of the basic premise, it's also a well-written mystery with interesting characters and reveals. I also liked how some characters smoked.
But the book... so this woman called Elisa, late 40's, is driving home from interstate after visiting her son's grave - he died about 10 years ago, when he was 15 - and suddenly, she's in a different car, in different clothes, with a different body (fatter) and she gets home and she has a different job, different friends and her son is alive. Parallel universe? That's what she thinks, and she investigates. It's a mystery novel of sorts, but the real clue, I found, was in one line in chapter 21 - "Her thoughts have always been more interesting to her than the world itself." Much earlier in the novel we become well acquainted with her vivid fantasies (she re-imagines petty disputes she used to have with a college room-mate, but in her re-imagining, they are violent and mixed up with current affairs) and so from my reading, one of the worlds she is/was in is real, the other a vivid fantasy. Which is the real one? Who cares? It's brilliant.
It reminds me of Sartre's comment that he finds ideas more real than things - in his excellent book 'Words' he says, "In the zoo, monkeys were less like monkeys" - as in, compared to what he thought of monkeys by reading about them and looking at them in books. I have always been attracted to Sartre because of this. I feel the same way. I got to the Parthenon in Athens and it was a lesser place than the Parthenon of my mind. I have fond memories of both Parthenons. So this book made perfect sense to me. Which is more real? Neither, in the end. A vivid fantasy is just that: vivid, and real life is not always so vivid. I can easily live in both worlds, and this is a novel that takes that concept further. On top of the basic premise, it's also a well-written mystery with interesting characters and reveals. I also liked how some characters smoked.
June 8, 2014
Elisa, unhappily married middle-aged mother of one dead son and one living, abruptly finds herself living in an alternate reality. Her new world is, in most respects, almost the same as the old except in a few key respects. In this new world her husband walks on eggshells around her and her sons, both alive, are estranged and on the other side of the country. And so Lennon's plot follows Elisa down the rabbit hole as she attempts to discover what has happened to her and learns to navigate this strange but eerily familiar world.
The first thing to know about J Robert Lennon's novel 'Familiar' is that there are no final answers. If you're looking for a mystery with a tidy dénouement, I suggest you look elsewhere. The plot, which at first seems relatively well contained, conceals an infinitely regressing set of questions. Each time you think you might be approaching the kernel of truth that will underpin and explain the odd events and behaviors, the narrative peels back another layer and you have to reassess your understanding of the plot and the protagonist. When you're reading, this is can be an insanely frustrating process, but it's also the product of meticulously structured storytelling that sucks the reader into Elisa's mind-bending headspace.
To describe this book as unsettling seems like a grave underestimation- in fact, reading this novel is a deeply disturbing experience and I found I had to periodically take a mental step back from the protagonist, to get a bit of space between myself and the rationalised psychosis of the narration. There are a lot of really great, subtle things going on in this story that make the discomfort worthwhile. The characterisation is sophisticated and really goes digging into some very murky areas of the psyche and human relationships. There's also another postmodern layer to the story that gets you thinking about the artifice of narrative and exposes the deterministic, 'finished world' conventions that readers expect from their books. Lennon completely inverts those expectations, and once you get past the frustration of having been thwarted, the brilliance and originality of it all is actually pretty great.
The first thing to know about J Robert Lennon's novel 'Familiar' is that there are no final answers. If you're looking for a mystery with a tidy dénouement, I suggest you look elsewhere. The plot, which at first seems relatively well contained, conceals an infinitely regressing set of questions. Each time you think you might be approaching the kernel of truth that will underpin and explain the odd events and behaviors, the narrative peels back another layer and you have to reassess your understanding of the plot and the protagonist. When you're reading, this is can be an insanely frustrating process, but it's also the product of meticulously structured storytelling that sucks the reader into Elisa's mind-bending headspace.
To describe this book as unsettling seems like a grave underestimation- in fact, reading this novel is a deeply disturbing experience and I found I had to periodically take a mental step back from the protagonist, to get a bit of space between myself and the rationalised psychosis of the narration. There are a lot of really great, subtle things going on in this story that make the discomfort worthwhile. The characterisation is sophisticated and really goes digging into some very murky areas of the psyche and human relationships. There's also another postmodern layer to the story that gets you thinking about the artifice of narrative and exposes the deterministic, 'finished world' conventions that readers expect from their books. Lennon completely inverts those expectations, and once you get past the frustration of having been thwarted, the brilliance and originality of it all is actually pretty great.
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