See You in Paradise

by J. Robert Lennon

"I guess the things that scare you are the things that are almost normal," observes one narrator in this collection of effervescent and often uncanny stories. Drawing on fifteen years of work, See You in Paradise is the fullest expression yet of J. Robert Lennon's distinctive and brilliantly comic take on the pathos and surreality at the heart of American life.
In Lennon's America, a portal to another universe can be discovered with surprising nonchalance in a suburban backyard, adoption almost reaches the level of blood sport, and old pals return from the dead to steal your girlfriend. Sexual dysfunction, suicide, tragic accidents, and career stagnation all create surprising opportunities for unexpected grace in this full-hearted and mischievous depiction of those days (weeks, months, years) we all have when things just don't go quite right.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Audiobook, Magical Realism, American, Adult, Short Story Collection

256 pages, Paperback

First published November 4, 2014

About the author

J. 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.

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five big fat stars to this one. People are weird and sometimes awful, and life is really confusing and a lot of totally inexplicable stuff happens. So does a lot of boring stuff. This is stories about that, many of which made me guffaw, some of which made me recoil. Take it slowly, read one a day. If you like things to be cheery, nice or sensible, maybe don't read it at all.

[Kathryn Bashaar · Rating 3 out of 5]

These were well-constructed, well-written stories, but most of them had no emotional resonance for me. There was one I really liked, though: A Stormy Evening at the Buck Snort Restaurant. It had so many layers in such a short story. It was about class differences, and about how thoroughly and tragically we can misunderstand each other. But most of all it was about the savage darkness that lives beneath the surface in all of us, even the neatest, cleanest, middle-class, middle-aged civilized ladies....which would be people like me.

[Neil Griffin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a thoroughly enjoying read. For fans of Sam Lipsyte or George Saunders, you really can't go wrong. Like the two above authors, Lennon definitely has a wheelhouse in terms of characters he's interested in. They are usually men, sometimes involved in very imperfect marriages or relationships, more likely than not to be in the lower-middle age of their late 30s, trying to do the right thing but usually falling on their face, sometimes quite poignantly so.

For a story collection, it's pretty rare in that there are really no weak stories here. There's something to admire in all of them. Some of them have an element of sci-fi or fantastic elements, which does work for the most part, but I did enjoy his realist mode more. Stories like "No Life", where two couples do a sort of battle over the same kid they want to adopt (and that has an amazing asshole of a protagonist) and "Total Humiliation in 1987", about a family's last vacation before a planned divorce were both highlights for me.

I'd be very curious how Lennon handles novels, so I'll probably pick up one of his in the next few months.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

None of the stories leap out as better than the others, per se - I don't know that there's one where you'll go "OH WOW!" and post it up as a banner example of Lennon's work. Instead, each of the stories spins together into the whole and makes this collection that oh-so-rare example of being greater than the sum of its individual parts. And those individual parts are all good. They are not connected, they are not linked - they are just all solid pieces of short fiction. And reading them on a porch or in air-conditioned suburban 'security' was just one of those perfect confluences of time, place, and story.

More at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2014/08...
and at TNBBC: http://thenextbestbookblog.blogspot.c...

[Ken-ichi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think it was my arrival at the seventh story about an early-middle-aged, sexually dissatisfied dude renegotiating his relationships when I had to put this one down. Maybe the eighth? I did like "Zombie Dan," even if it suffered from all of the same problems, probably because it managed to also be about something else, just barely, something kind of on the edge of plausibility. I liked that the undead had these insights that were uncanny but mundane, like they didn't have any useful information, just uncomfortable gossip.

[Phyllis · Rating 5 out of 5]

14 short stories, and every one of them is excellent. The characters in each story are so groundedly human that, when something uncanny occurs, it feels like a perfectly reasonable thing. In some of them, the uncanny arises in the very first sentence, but it wends its way so seamlessly in and through the characters lives that neither they nor the reader can imagine life being any other way.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

See You In Paradise By J. Robert Lennon
4/4/22
“Portal”-4/5-A dad recounts the story of his adventures with his family through a portal found in their backyard. The destinations are mundane at first but grow to be more exotic, dangerous even. His family ages and grow out of the urge to adventure, at least with one another like they used to, and the dad longs to return to the days where they seemed to love eachother more and he used to be excited to wake up in the morning. There is a magic to certain periods of your life, and although there were plenty problems as you lived through this period you look back fondly and wish you could return. It’s a bittersweet story told in a light, humorous voice, and it’s hard not to relate to this father’s lost sense of adventure and purpose. Great use of a science fiction premise to underscore a universal feeling.

“No Life”-4/5-A couple who can not conceive on their own are looking to adopt, but they are in competition with other potential parents. One pair invites them over under the guise of dinner while their ulterior motive is to threaten the protagonists with their criminal history, claiming they will prevent that couple from ever adopting kids. This is a story of a couple in a critical transitional period in their relationship, moving from attitudes of 20 year olds who now are considering a future and a legacy. Their pain is easy to see, the relatioship is strong but worn. By the end, we feel pity for the man who continues to be punished for the mistakes he made and empathy for his wife who is punished by association, but she is now resolved to have her own children. But at least they aren’t the texans, who are wealthy, unhappy, priveliged and even emptier than they are.

“See You In Paradise”-4/5-An average, agreeable man meets a wealthy man’s daughter and falls sort of in love, but is very quickly swept up by her father who “tests” him by sending him to work on an almost desolate bahamian island. He leaves his life and job and family for the opportunity because he’s agreeable and mostly becasue he finds it impossible not to be liked. The island is not a paradise and is boring, and eventually he’s fired at the drop of a hat after a short period, which also means his girlfriend dumps him. He goes back to life as he knew it before not learning a single thing about the experience he just went through and why, maybe, it’s OK not to please everyone around you without considering your own well being too. Extra points for making me laugh out loud when he describes all the reasons he should be considered funny!

“Hibachi”-5/5-A mild mannered accounted is hit by a car and paralyzed from the waist down, and he and his wife adjust to their new life. After a trip to a hibachi restaurant, the husband recognizes his wife enjoys the spectacle of it more than she lets on, and so for her birthday he buys a massive at-home hibachi setup. She is immediately taken to it and practices endlessly. Her training culminates in a dinner party she throws for their now-estranged friends, and in the midst of her showing trick after perfectly-executed trick, she throws flaming onion slices at each of them (injuring a few). The couple profess their love and devotion to one another. This has been by far the sweetest thing I’ve read so far and is a real stand out story. First, there is tremendous growth of character both in the man (he is more isolated and quitely angry than ever, but his devotion and love for his wife only grows) and the woman (she bares all of this with grace, but is hiding her anger for his sake). The two learn to love one another (physically and emotionally) in brand new, deeper ways and find new ways to communicate that love as well. We are shown true human connection not between the protagonists and old friends but from a delivery driver who talks to the man like a normal human and helps set up the entire grill because "why not"? This is a quirky, uplifting, emotionally realistic story with humor laced throughout. Can’t ask for more!

"Zombie Dan”-3/5-A guy who’s not that great dies and is brought back to life, and his mom gets all his old high school friends to come back and help him recouperate and remember who he is. While this happens, our protagonist starts up a relationship with one of the old crew, but as the zombie regains his memories she ends up getting together with him. The zombie has a strange ability to know every secret of everone in his memories, including what they’re thinking. This angers his mom, who doesn’t like what he knows about her and what he’s revealing, and she hires our protagonist to kill the zombie son. He arrives to do it but of course the zombie knows he’s coming, and instead the zombie reveals a secret about our protagonist's parents (his dad wasn’t the bad guy after all). This particular story was highly recommended, but I’m actually not sure why. Interesting enough premise, fun twist that zombies are oracles, but the love triangle seems like a useless plot point and I’m not sure anything interesting is revealed by the end. There are a few great lines about whether zombies prove god’s existence or not, but that killing one is only a sin if god doesnt exist. There is a cool idea about our current life being a screen between the mind and the soul. Ultimately I felt a significant “so what” by the end, though.

“A stormy evening at the buck snort restaurant”-4/5-A couple find refuge in the backwater buck snort restaurant during a hurricane, now operated by a pair of late 30’s twins who seem to have either developmental or social (or both) disabilities. The couple are afraid of the twins and try to make an escape, but as they make their way to the car the sign of the inn breaks free and hits (kills?) the husband. While the male twin tries to come out and help, the wife stabs him in what she believes to be self defense. She feels righteous for doing so, but doesn’t yet realize what she’s done by the end of the story. Here we have the story of how a small town gets smaller and poorer, how businesses die, how we perceive mental/social disability, and how a pleasant pair of seamingly reasonable people can be worked into a fearful and violent tizzy when they are “cornered” (even though there is no real threat) and can even put themselves in harms way. It’s a meeting of two very different worlds and communication and understanding are absent. There’s a lot packed in here, and again this author seems to know how to use a page limitation well.

“The Wraith”-5/5-A woman with depression will not get treatment, and it worsens to the point of attempted suicide. Her husband is always supportive of her, but realizes he is unable to change her. The attempted suicide releases a corporeal embodiment of her depression while the remaining parts of her, cheerful and positive, are allowed to go about a normal daily routine. At night, the two merge again before cycling again the next day. This proceeds until they accidentally conceive a child, at which point she realizes she cannot continue like this and we see a glimmer of hope for their future (and anyone’s, really). There is a weight to this story, and a realism about the depiction of depression. There is also an almost tangible sense of weightlessness when the woman gets to leave her depression behind for a day, unburdened by it if only for a while. The husband is not a saint and has challenges and weaknesses, but their complementary traits and honest depiction make them real in this story. This feels like it was written by someone who knows what it’s like to be in a depressive relationship, and there is frustration, patience, and empathy in the writing.

"The Accursed Items”-4/5-A collection of items that are unwanted or forgotten and brief (sometimes nonexistine) descriptions of them. It reads like a set of short story starters that were never used, and it’s fun to think this is a window into the life of a writer.

“Weber’s Head”-3/5-A man gets an awful roommate after breaking up with his girlfriend, and their relationship is strained from the start. The new roommate is sort of smug and insufferable, but is almots enviable for his dumb naivite. He sculpts a near perfect facsimile of his own head, which our protagonist finds upon snooping in his room. The roomate dies while hiking up a nearby mountain to propose to his girlfriend and an avalanche ensues, and our protagonist gets back together with his ex while sort of reinventing himself but also just giving in to the fact that he’s better off a “kept man”. There are some good metaphors in here (a crumbling mountain that is eventually reclaimed and rejuvenated, like the protagonist) and I like the odd roommate and his girlfriend. I don’t get much more from it, but maybe a re-read could help with that.

“Ecstasy”-3/5-A babysitter is woken by a police officer who informs her that the parents of the kids she sits are dead. She stays at the house looking around for a while until a relative comes to relieve her, and she walks home. The officer calls her again to thank her, and he asks her out. She is sad and feels like she should be expressing more grief, but she is also excited. I’m not sure if this is a story just about those times in life that are full of strong emotions, where good things and bad things happen all at once and we are confused about conflicting feelings. Or maybe there is some deeper meaning I missed? It’s an interesting scene for sure, but I’m not sure I grabbed more than just being brought along for the ride.

“Total Humiliation in 1987”-4/5-A family takes one final trip to their regular vacation spot before the parents get a divorce, precipitated by the general unrest and ambition for more from the mother and the general contentedness and tendancy to settle of the father. During their stay at the lake house, they find a time capsule with testaments of a family that was very unhappy, but at varying degrees of ability to see it or discuss it. There are parallels to the current family, but their reasons for disfunction are significantly different. They decide to put their own items in the time capsule, and the daughters, in an act of rebellion, bury their mother’s blackberry that is constantly stealing her from them. They seem to suspect more about the divorce and their mother’s new life than they let on. This is a really solid story about inevitable change, about people growing apart, about their being blame on both sides but no winners in a fracturing family. An inevitable catastrophe that each party must come to terms with on their own time, in their own way. It’s about pain, but acceptance as well.

“Flight”-3/5-A dreamlike telling of a man’s journey to see his “dying” mother, who wasn’t dying, and how difficult it was for him to return home due to consistently delayed or re-routed flights. He also had a strange encounter with a woman who called his phone as a wrong number but confessed that she wanted him back after a breakup. There is a theme of missed connection in both his travel as well as his personal life, loss and derailment are consistent. The time skipping and flash backs all add to a confused overtone, and it seems to emphasize how confusing his life-and by extension everyone’s-is. I really liked how this story progressed. I really like the hazy and dreamlike feel. I’m not sure I got a deeper message or emphasis, but the journey of it was excellent.

“The Future Journal”-5/5-A divorced teacher has a bad interaction with is boss, has a setback that’s one too many, and all at once feels the crushing weight of his present life and the future. To reconcile it, he does the only thing that makes sense: visits the past. He drives to his ex-wife’s house, sneaks in, sees his daughter for a brief while, and sneaks back out to return to his new girlfriend who he likes very much. Still raw but invigorated, he is ready to address his present and future again. This is a person in both transition and in crisis, and man is that relatable right now. He has to reinvest in what he wants to be, what he wants his life to be. He has the urge to burn it all down and start fresh (his car is a silly relic that he’s not sure represents him anymore, his job is stifling), but has to recognize that parts of his life are still very much worth living (his girlfriend), and that his past is not entirely a waste (his daughter). I get that.

"Farewell, Bounder”-3/5-We have a story of a stray dog taken in by a man and his girlfriend, and then time elapses until the dog is on hsi death bed and the family dynamic and ownership of the dog has changed dramatically. Lots of interwoven storylines, but some characters seem a little interchangeable from onese portrayed in other stories in the collection. Ultimately the surprise is that the dog is euthanized in front of a crowd who are gathered in his honor, but honestly a dog death is a pretty cheap tug of the heart strings. The dog ties these lives together, and I get that the passing of the dog can be the passing of a history with someone or the passing of a meaningful connection between people, but it left me pretty cold.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being a fan of Lennon's novels I was looking forward to reading this but was disappointed by the first story. I don't understand put that one first, as for me it was the weakest in the collection. The collection, however, did dramatically improve. And some stories like "Zombie Dan," "Farewell Bounder" and "Total Humiliation in 1987" were excellent. The book would have been worth reading for these stories alone. I couldn't help comparing some of the stories to those of George Saunders - especially "Zombie Dan" and "Portal" as Lennon chooses similar subject matter, and strikes a similar balance between futuristic themes and portrayal of everyday American life. This is at it's best in "Zombie Dan" where doctors are able to bring people back to life. What is interesting to me isn't the subject matter but the way the characters react to what's going on. Lennon writes about the ordinary American; people who are divorced, or about to be divorced, people trying to make the best of their lives who find themselves in situations that send them, even if only momentarily, into a different mode of being and thinking. I very much enjoyed this collection - just a shame about that first story.

[Catherine Mustread · Rating 3 out of 5]

Portal, is the first short story found in See You in Paradise.  A magical shimmering thing in a suburban family's backyard causes a giddy era of family bonding.  Unfortunately the era soon comes to an end and realism returns.  The combination of reality and fantasy combined with the magical feeling of memories of happier times is subdued by the reality of teenagers and the end of enchanted times.

A good review of this book can be found in the NYT Sunday Book Review 18 Jan 2015.

I listened to this story on Selected Shorts where it was featured on a segment called Strange Places.

[Wendy Cosin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lennon's short stories capture our peculiarities and blow them up, sometimes pushing darkness to the absurd. Three stories are fantastical. In Portal, family members change after exploring alternative worlds together; Zombie Dan questions the authenticity of how we live; Wraith provides an inventive way of dealing with depression. The other stories, rooted in mostly in the world as we know it, cover similar territory - dysfunctional couples, individualism, shame, family dynamics.

Surprisingly, I found most of the stories vary entertaining, even though they left me feeling the pathos of it all.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure - I won an advanced copy of this thanks to the Goodreads Giveaway program and Graywolf Press...and I couldn't be happier, because I haven't been more delighted with a collection of short stories in years!

The stories that appear in J. Robert Lennon's, See You in Paradise: Stories are a real treat. From the absurd to the sublime to the downright bizarre he tilts the axis on the human condition just enough to show the reader something familiar in a new and interesting way. While all of the stories were terrific, I particularly enjoyed Portal and The Accursed Items. I highly recommend it.

[Leah Mosher · Rating 4 out of 5]

A portal to another universe discovered in a suburban backyard. A dead loser friend who is brought back to life. A roommate who sculpts a more-than-lifelike replica of his own head out of clay. A list of accursed items. These are the stories that inhabit J. Robert Lennon’s collection of short fiction, which draws on 15 years of work. These pieces are delightfully odd, charmingly bizarre, and darkly comic.

[Janelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the first time in a long time, I found myself reluctant to turn the pages because I didn't want the book to end. Each short story is a wacked out microcosm that show how absurdity, implausibility and real life are just a spectrum, Lennon's characters and their honest to god humanity shines through, even in the zombies (yes this book has zombies!). He keeps it painfully real, a tough feat in the realm of speculative fiction, and he owns every word of it. Absolutely brilliant book.

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love happy endings (and I cannot lie).... and it spite of my love for happy endings, J. Robert Lennon is fast becoming my favorite writer. Something uneasy lurks in each and every one of the stories in this collection, but there is nothing predictable or conventional about any of the stories, or the characters. Like Lennon's Broken River, this book kept calling me back. "Just one more story," until there weren't any stories left.

[Jack Shoegazer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid collection, mostly domestic stories with a dark creepiness lurking, which provide much of the narrative momentum. Light on weight and epiphany for my tastes, but a good collection that gets better as it goes.

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyable and inventive.

[Brett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic stories. Funny, dark, quirky, and real, often several of these at once. Lennon makes the mundane interesting and the interesting meaningful.

[PamM · Rating 5 out of 5]

I intended to read just one story that had been recommended to me, but ended up consuming every one of these perfect, disturbing gems.

[Cocaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly brilliant. One of America's best writers.

[Judith Shadford · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really like this collection of short stories, in part because Lennon is talking about ordinary people's sadness, depression, desire to do the right thing, and then puts them in totally weird places.

Nameless guy with his wife, Gretchen, kids Luann and Chester, finds a dying portal hidden in the backyard. They end up going places as a sort of easy, cheap trip to Disneyland. They are happy, sharing their adventures and their secret. Then, the kids get bored, Gretchen slips into denial that they ever did such a thing. And the nameless husband finishes destroying the portal and hides it with shrubbery, mourning the loss of magic in their lives.

That's what makes Lennon compelling! I read the back of the book in the library, which included a quote from Jess Walter: "These stories are funny and moving, endlessly inventive and charmingly absurd.... Lennon can do anything on the page." That's what I checked the book out. Walters is right. (No surprise there.)

[Keegan Curry · Rating 2 out of 5]

The good: Often fully encapsulates a characters perspective, vivid in internal dialogue and details of space and place. A few interesting fantastical / sci-fi ideas grounded in a suburban American perspective.

The bad: Throughout more or less the entirety of the collection of unrelated short stories, there is a single characters perspective embodied by different sad, old, men who's lives are made worse by each woman they encounter. Every female character in this book is deceitful, cruel, or in some other way a wholly destabilizing and negative influence in a man's life. I struggle to parse if there is much in the way of commentary on power dynamics or societal roles in the author's perspective, and in this context the stories contained in the collection simply reek of lonely, divorced misguided misogyny.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories are so strange and surreal. Lennon has such a unique writing style that I'm dying to read more of. However, I think that the first three stories were the weakest and I almost abandoned the collection completely because of them. Fortunately, "Hibachi" turned the collection around. "Hibachi" and "Weber's Head" were my favorites.

Also, I think I've found my new favorite description of a woman.

"Ruperta was an arrangement of pleasing roundness, wide round eyes nestled in wide round glasses, surrounded by black parentheses of hair set atop a full, pink melon head. Her body was all balls stuck to balls: a snowman of flesh. She was my type—indeed, the perfect expression of it."

If a man calls you a "snowman of flesh," marry him.

[Ruthi · Rating 5 out of 5]

2020 might be the first year I have had multiple favorite short story collections read & that feels nice! I used to absolutely loathe the form as I was forced to read too many during school but last year, I forced myself to read a few collections and I decided to continue that side challenge this year, too.
I’m glad I did because “See You In Paradise” manages to be the first book I’ve thought of as “cerebral, but in a, like, cute way.” It explores very mundane aspects of life but does so in a way that makes the ordinary fantastic or deeply thought-provoking, and I truly couldn’t get enough of how each & every story made me feel. 5/5 stars, for sure, and I definitely recommend it to both lovers & haters and anyone in between of the short story form.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm 4 months married and WOWEE, what resonance!

"She can't seem to get worked up about anything these days. It's a feature of their marriage: as sexual passion has faded, so has pride, so has resentment. Sometimes she feels she may vanish completely into an undifferentiated fog of vague love." - No Life

"Both of them claimed to enjoy [sex] while in its throes, but neither had ever relished the negotiations, preparations, and embarrassments necessary for its initiation." - Hibachi

92 short stories to go in 222 in 2022!

[Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

very nice, eerie collection of stories. while all the characters sort of felt like the same person (scared man, bored woman), i liked that i could end each chapter feeling a different sort of disconcerted.

my favorites in no particular order were Hibachi, Total Humiliation in 1987, No Life, and A Stormy Evening At Buck Snort Restaurant.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

An outstanding collection of short stories - nearly all of which I wish were full novels. Zombies stands out in my mind, but I really enjoyed almost the entire collection of these unhappy relationships. Will be checking out more of Lennon's work.

[P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Happy to have read this.
I like that it has a dark aspect to it but is not horrific.
Curiously dark humor.
Appreciate the imagination in these stories.
Really enjoyed the family who had a time traveling door in their back yard.
And the 'last vacation as a family' story.

[Emily]

She can't seem to get worked up about anything these days. It's a feature of their marriage: as sexual passion has faded, so has pride, so has resentment. Sometimes she feels she may vanish completely into an undifferentiated fog of vague love. (Pg. 23)

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

He slimes suburbia with a cynicism
no mind cleanup crew can easily overcome.
This raises my esteem. 3.5 STARS !

[bigbonton · Rating 2 out of 5]

almost a good idea but needs focus