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Transcription

Not yet published
Expected 7 Apr 26
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From the “most talented writer of his generation” (The New York Times), a lightning flash of a novel that is at once a gripping emotional drama and a brilliant examination of the devices, digital and literary, we use to store―or to erase―our memories.

The narrator of Ben Lerner’s new novel has traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor and the father of his college friend, Max. Thomas is a giant in the arts who seems to hail “from the future and the past simultaneously” and who “reenchants the air” when he speaks. But the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink. He arrives at Thomas’s house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess.

What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is both the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator, and a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich or impoverish our connection to one another, that store or obliterate memory. Haunted by Kafka (there are echoes of “The Judgement” and “A Hunger Artist”), but utterly contemporary, Lerner combines trenchant insight with lyric mystery. Ultimately, Transcription demonstrates what only a work of fiction can record.

144 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication January 1, 2026

5 people are currently reading
700 people want to read

About the author

Ben Lerner

71 books1,609 followers
Ben Lerner is an American poet, novelist, and critic. He was awarded the Hayden Carruth prize for his cycle of fifty-two sonnets, The Lichtenberg Figures. In 2004, Library Journal named it one of the year's twelve best books of poetry. The Lichtenberg Figures appeared in a German translation in 2010, for which it received the "Preis der Stadt Münster für internationale Poesie" in 2011, making Lerner the first American to receive this honor.

Born and raised in Topeka, which figures in each of his books of poetry, Lerner is a 1997 graduate of Topeka High School where he was a standout in debate and forensics. At Brown University he earned a B.A. in Political Theory and an MFA in Poetry. He traveled on a Fulbright Scholarship to Madrid, Spain in 2003 where he wrote his second book, Angle of Yaw, which was published in 2006 and was subsequently named a finalist for the National Book Award, and was selected by Brian Foley as one of the "25 important books of poetry of the 00s (2000-2009)". Lerner's third full-length poetry collection, Mean Free Path, was published in 2010.

Lerner's first novel, Leaving the Atocha Station, was published by Coffee House Press in August 2011. It was named one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker, The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, and New York Magazine, among other periodicals. It won the Believer Book Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for "first fiction" and the New York Public Library's Young Lions prize.

In 2008 Lerner began editing poetry for Critical Quarterly, a British academic publication. He has taught at California College of the Arts, the University of Pittsburgh, and in 2010 joined the faculty of the MFA program at Brooklyn College.

Lerner's mother is the well-known psychologist Harriet Lerner.

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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
Profile Image for Henk.
1,197 reviews307 followers
August 27, 2025
Erudite and focusing on the liminal space between public persona and private family relationships. Echoes of earlier turns of phrase and thoughts reverberate in the narrative, as do themes of suicide and self harm
But trust me, no matter how great it was to have him as a mentor, you don’t want a spirit medium as a father.

An interviewer is on his way to Thomas, in his 90s, and a titan within the arts and a veritable walking encyclopaedia. In three sections Ben Lerner takes the interview with Thomas and reflects on the ethics of recording and editing these exchanges with someone whose mental faculties are in decline and how his son perceives Thomas. This first section, called Hotel Providence for the university town Thomas lives, draws the reader into memories resurfacing and comments on our relationship with technology (with a iPhone getting wet forming an important plot point) and questionable ethics of our narrator in interviewing a 90 year old who clearly seems to struggle.
Meanwhile beneath the surface violence seems to simmer, exemplified in offhand sentences like: It was conventional undergraduate stuff, but then, so is suicide.

[Hotel Villa Real], the second part of the book centres around a visit to Madrid at a kind of conference at a museum (Reina Sofia) on the work of Thomas. This section feels a lot like a chapter in Parade by Rachel Cusk and starts addressing the ethics of interviews with someone whose faculties are waning.

Finally in Hotel Arbez (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel...) we have a granddaughter who refuses to eat from a very young age. Clearly there are some frustrations of having Thomas as a father. ASMR and laissez-faire techniques are used in facing the immense frustration and powerlessness of the parents.
Technology again forms a major part here, and forms an interesting, non-judgemental commentary on our inability to truly connect with each other, and especially those closest to us: But our proximity just produced the most intense forms of estrangement

The style and themes of Transcription are reminiscent to the works of Katie Kitamura, Rachel Cusk and Jesse Ball, in how non-linearity of narrative (echoing between themselves), vagueness of place (even though we Covid-19 plays an important role in the last part of the book and we have Eva, a ten year old singing along to Taylor Swift’s Anti-Hero) and different takes on events rendered earlier are important.

I enjoyed this short novel and this is definitely a book to watch out for when it is published, I think many will enjoy the erudite take on our modern world and our relationship with each other under barrages of screen time, recordings and the mythologies we create.

Quotes:
I didn’t find it. I woke up.
But waking doesn’t end the dream.

Sanity often requires the disavowal of the senses.
Profile Image for CJ Alberts.
164 reviews1,159 followers
Read
October 11, 2025
Ben Lerner in my personal Mt Rushmore of white straight guys allowed to keep writing books
Profile Image for Sofia.
1,349 reviews295 followers
November 22, 2025
In a world where our devices seem to run interference with our being in the world, with our connections to others. How we now live and see the world as filtered through our devices. We even see family death through our device, just as we’ve just seen the Gazan genocide online. How does this affect us? Are we just another device ourselves and can turn ourselves of like we do the devices?

Transcription is the work of a poet who puts us in the space between. The place between our private lives and our public lives especially if we are ‘famous’. The place between the ‘good use’ of our devices and becoming addicted to them. The place between being independent human beings with our own agency and being an addendum to our devices in a place where we cannot function without them. With his spotlight on our children, Lerner explores how these in between spaces can affect them as well. How we’ve made our devices part of their being as well and the possible results.

An ARC kindly provided by author/publisher via Netgalley.
Profile Image for Miranda.
355 reviews23 followers
December 7, 2025
Ugh it’s so good when writers write. I love how this is all tangled up in itself.
Profile Image for Tina.
1,096 reviews179 followers
November 1, 2025
I was intrigued to read Transcription by Ben Lerner because I enjoyed his poetry book The Lights. This was my first novel by him and I enjoyed it too! I liked the structure to the writing as each chapter is named after a different hotel and takes place in a different time. I enjoyed the dialogue which included texts with abbreviations like Lmk and Ofc. The book begins with a man traveling to interview an author and he has dropped his phone in the sink so he has no way to record the interview. It’s interesting the way we learn about the relationship between the interviewer and the author and then what happens after and the change in point of view and the reflection on that specific interview and the author’s life and relationship with his son and niece. Definitely engaging writing and I’m looking forward to reading more from Lerner.

Thank you to FSG Books via NetGalley for my ARC!
Profile Image for Aden.
437 reviews4 followers
September 2, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an eARC of this novel.

This is a masterclass is brevity. TRANSCRIPTION might be the first great contemporary Post-COVID novel that tackles the nature of societal isolation and fear. I have mostly felt that contemporary novels of the past couple of years have shoehorned in conversations of the pandemic without serving the greater work of art (outside of Greenwell's SMALL RAIN, whose similar use of monologues and chamber storytelling could sit alongside this novel). Into this fear, Lerner interrogates the multifaceted nature of technology: tech that unites us, tech that distracts us, tech that forces our hand. In just 144 pages, he really analyzes the contemporary malaise of the tether to our devices. Ultimately, though, this is a novel of family. In 3 sections, Lerner creates a lush diorama of family in the 21st century, specifically along the father/child dyad. It's complicated and comparative, incredibly compelling until the last sentence. I cannot recommend this (and all of Lerner's fiction) enough. This should practically be required reading as human beings (with iPhones).

TRANSCRIPTION releases April 7, 2026
Profile Image for Jonathan.
190 reviews185 followers
December 11, 2025
I love Ben Lerner, I feel he is so underrated in this current time of literature. The writing in this book was up there with some of his best, however the story was by far the least engaging thing he’s ever written in my honest opinion. Someone else might feel differently and connect but the fragmented shortness of this book in general didn’t allow for enough of what he was trying to get across. The first part is strong, the second felt wasted, and the third was a boring, albeit well written, slog.
Profile Image for Professor Weasel.
929 reviews9 followers
November 19, 2025
really impressive. I liked how the majority of the book was dialogue. I also, quite frankly, liked how the poetic German professor didn't get to speak that much (initially my heart was sinking - i.e. "is this going to be the whole book?"). A poetic and weird book overall about voices and voice. definitely better than the Topeka school which I barely remember. AI could never write this book, it is way too fragmented and weird, which is a huge testament of the power of literature over The Machine. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.
Profile Image for Jess.
39 reviews9 followers
August 25, 2025
“…Two realities in one space; now I’m unclear which reality was more real.”

Lerner’s novels break open how I think about making meaning out of fiction and out of life, and what happens when the two intersect or overlap. This is animated by a lot of compelling questions, including: how does technology get us closer to and further from objective reality, if there even is such a thing…and, if there is, how much does it matter? How do technologies (including the novel!) help and hinder how we connect with and see each other? That it can ask such big questions, turn them over in several ways, and still feel palpably human all along is Lerner’s real gift.

This is a true stunner that’s well-served by its concision. I ate it up in a rapturous trance. I’m looking forward to reading essays on this when it comes out.
639 reviews24 followers
August 20, 2025
Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. The narrator of this book comes to Providence to interview Thomas, his 90 year old mentor and a towering figure in the arts. The narrator drops his smartphone in a sink and is forced to record the interview by written notes and is too mortified to admit this to Thomas. As stressful as this is, Thomas at times also confuses the narrator for his son Max, who is also a friend of the narrator’s. Filled with rich dialogue, this simple story moves forward and slips into surreal moments.
Profile Image for maddy.
124 reviews3 followers
November 17, 2025
these screens, my love, they dull our senses.

part poetry, part erudite commentary, Transcription tackles a collection of timely and complex balancing acts. all three parts center around our yearning for connection in a deeply disconnected world dominated by phone screens, and how this has altered our picture of the “normal” family.

what i love most about transcription lies in the title itself — the novel is a recollection. we are told this story through a collection of memories, many of which are delivered doubtfully or through clouded vision. i’m a sucker for unreliable narrators, and i’d go as far as to say that Lerner has mastered the use of it contextually and thematically.

this is a short read, one that can definitely be devoured in one sitting. i recommend that you do, because it’s definitely worth it.


thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with the ARC!
Profile Image for Matt.
967 reviews220 followers
September 3, 2025
Maybe this went over my head a bit. I was captivated by the initial setup of the narrator travelling to meet up with Thomas, but after the first night of conversation the story just got dull and went off on a lot of random side stories (this is mainly Thomas telling anecdotes).
Profile Image for Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer.
2,189 reviews1,797 followers
October 30, 2025
I kept seeing the flowers as organic one instant and as artificial the next, a kind of duck–rabbit effect, not between things the object might represent, but between nature and culture, the given and the constructed. And I carried this new way of looking, or this new hinge in my looking, outside the museum: when my sister dragged me camping, for instance, I was typically unmoved by “unspoiled” mountain views; after the glass flowers, I would see cracks in the rock face as penciled, as a history of small decisions, and then experience the view as beautiful. I could will myself to see the rose and pink of a sunset as applied in touches or stains and then revert to seeing it as natural; and so on. It was with Anisa that I first became conscious of this quiet but crucial technique, somewhere between a child’s game, a CBT exercise, and a religion. Eventually I’d call this “fiction.”

 
This is the American poet, essayist, and critic’s fourth novel - due to be published in April 2026 – and following on from “Leaving the Atocha Station” (2011) – 2012 James Tait Black Memorial Prize Finalist, “10:04” (2014) – 2015 Folio Prize Finalist and “The Topeka School” (2019) – 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner. 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist – but the first I have read.
 
An article in People Magazine earlier this year contained some excellent descriptions of the novel by the author – both its conception and its manifesto: "A book about fathers and sons, a book about male friendship and rivalry, about parenting in a burning world. … about all the love and pain and confusion these intergenerational relationships involve … about how changing technologies — particularly smartphones — alter the ways we interact with one another, how they help connect us or drive us apart, how they might enhance or erase our memories …. and it’s about how the air is full of messages, full of disembodied voices, full of ghosts. And while there is no disputing the power of the screen, this book is ultimately an argument for the page — that art, that fiction, can record something your iPhone can’t”.
 
The short novel is told in three parts: Hotel Providence, Hotel Villa Real (which is much the shortest) and Hotel Arbez – with both the first and third heavily referencing/influenced by Kafka short stories: “The Judgement” (concerning a man, his father and the father’s closer friendship and correspondence with his son’s friend) and “The Hunger Artist” respectively. 
 
The set up of the story is that the unnamed first party narrator of the first and second parts (and the person addressed in the third part) travels to Providence to meet with something of a giant in the art world – Thomas, the father of the narrator’s college friend Max, and a lifelong mentor to the narrator.  Thomas has just turned 90 and his eccentricities (including his ability to turn any conversation into a series of erudite abstractions) are turning into possible dementia. 
 
Crucially the narrator drops his phone in water which has two impacts.  The immediate one for his interview with Thomas is that he cannot record it – something he tries to get around admitting by obfuscation.  The second and most striking on a first read of this section is that being without his phone acts almost as a form of time travel to the past.
 
I was having an unusual experience of presence—more aware of silicates glittering in the asphalt, the little plumes of vapor that were my breath, the articulation of branches and their shadows on the sidewalk—but I was also walking into my past, because this was a landscape so dense with formative memories and events, and because only in the past would I be deviceless …. But it wasn’t just people: the light arriving from the stars was younger, too, the birds dreaming in the tree cavities were the birds of the past, growth rings had vanished from the trees in which they slept—and this time travel depended on my being prevented from checking on Eva or Googling “songbird life expectancy” or “Caroline Sharpe” as I walked uphill.

 
In the second section though when the narrator meets with a group of others at something of a tribute to Thomas – and tells some of the story of this encounter (one which ends as the increasingly reclusive Thomas’s last ever interview) – he is shocked at the negative reaction his story provokes – the other participants furious that, in their view, he is effectively admitting that the interview was faked, an interview that was already seen as in bad taste (particularly by Max) as taking advantage of a man of declining mental facilities.
 
The third section is a one-sided dialogue as Max tells the narrator various incidents involving his relationship with Thomas including difficulties with Max’s young daughter (who had a close bond with Thomas) who suffers from an eating disorder for which the only breakthrough seems to be You Tube Unboxing videos “ASMR treats ARFID.”; Thomas’s near death in hospital in the early days of COVID and crucially an incident when Max (whose relationship with his father is distant and strained ever since the death of Max’s mother when he was young and his subsequent packing off to boarding schools) uses what he thinks is his last phone call with his dying father (held over a nurse’s phone after a Zoom call fails) to confess his thoughts and feelings – a call of which Thomas subsequently has no recall; a subsequent visit to his father where his experience of lockdown is similar to the narrator’s of being sans phone (and subsequently many other parts echo with the first section - causing us to question its very nature).
 
I was reminded of course of Katie Kitamura’s “Audition” but I feel this novel had more emotional resonance - particularly in the hospital COVID scene.

The late 19th Century, Bohemian father and son glass artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka – crafters of botanical models from glass, most famously Havard’s glass flower collection – are also a recurring theme in the novel (including at its end).  I was not sure if the link/allusion I immediately had to the glass of an IPhone screen was deliberate – but I suspect in a novel as thoughtful as this little is accidental.
 
Overall, I found this an extremely intelligent and thought provoking novel – and one I would love (and expect to see) on some 2026 prize lists
 
My thanks to Farrar Strauss and Giroux and to Granta for an ARC via NetGalley
 
I wanted to hurt him. Once—only once—did I tell him about my concern with Emmie’s eating, and before the word ‘Hungerkünstler’ was fully out of his mouth, before he could quote his beloved Kafka at me, or launch into some discourse about the history of pre-Christian asceticism, I snapped at him in German: This is not … theater, Dad, this isn’t art or literature, Emmie isn’t a character in a fiction, she’s my .. daughter.
Profile Image for A..
23 reviews2 followers
August 28, 2025
Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the ARC of this novel.

One of the fond memories I have of my time as a graduate English major were the days when we would sit around the conference table and go over, talk about, discuss, and even argue over a novel. Those exchanges answered questions, expanded themes you hadn’t considered, brought to light connections that were missed. The process of going over the novel with people who saw things you didn’t, whose take on the novel as a whole was different than yours, gave one a deeper appreciation of the novel, of what the novel was trying to accomplish when in the hands of the reader.

Ben Lerner’s Transcription is one of those novels I wish I had a room full of readers to go over the scenes with, the themes, the ideas. It is a short book with a fairly straightforward structure: A former student goes back to interview his famous mentor, things happen (I don’t like to give specifics in reviews), and the repercussions from that encounter make up the rest of the novel. Yet within the structure there are tangents, offshoots where we venture off to other times, other places. Lerner has the ability to create moments of philosophical, sometimes metaphysical, depth from the most mundane moments that pull you away from the main narrative to focus on this thought or idea, then cast you back to the story as if nothing has happened. But now you’re reading the main story with this additional little kernel of an idea floating around in your mind, and it can’t help but shift the interpretation of what you’re reading, adding a different color, a different tone. It’s masterful if sometimes maddening because that’s when I want to put the novel down and ask “Why?”

Transcription: Even the title is begging for interpretation. There are sections in the novel that read like transcriptions, sections of just back-and-forth dialogue, Q&A style. Does that give them more authority? More authenticity? What, exactly, is being transcribed? I’ve read Lerner’s other novels, so I know I have to come up with my own answers, my own interpretation. And this, fundamentally, is the pleasure of this novel. Transcription is a satisfying novel on one hand—the story feels complete, the final section complements the first section giving the novel an almost circular feel—but it does linger in the mind. Sitting here almost two days after finishing it, I am still thinking about many things in the novel: the importance of this or that scene, the brief appearances of certain characters, the meaning of the final section of text in the novel. Why the brackets [you’ll have to read the novel to understand]? The novel is short enough that I will probably reread it just to see if I can come up with answers to my own questions.

If I’ve muddled the review so you don’t know what I’m saying (which I tend to do), this is what I’m saying: Transcription is a very interesting, well-written novel with emotional depth that comes to a satisfying conclusion. And it is also a novel with great ideas and views that make you pause, nod your head, or shake it in disagreement, a novel that raises questions about the meaning of our existence in these recent times and the resonances from the past that continue to affect us in our present. The novel asks questions, and most great novels do.
Profile Image for Margaret C.
60 reviews
November 11, 2025
Transcription is an accomplished and thought provoking novel that masterfully examines intergenerational relationships and how our smartphones are both connecting and dividing us.

The book is constructed in three sections, each named for a hotel.

In the first part, Hotel Providence, the narrator, is on his way to interview his ninety year old mentor and father of his college friend Max, when he accidentally drops his smartphone into the sink. Thomas, who is widely esteemed in the arts world, is assuming that their conversation is being recorded. The narrator for unknown reasons, doesn’t admit that his device is not working.

In the second part, Hotel Villa Real, there is an event to remember and celebrate Thomas’ life. The narrator is berated by some of the attendees for deceiving the old man, in what has turned out to be his last published interview.

In the third part, Hotel Arbez, Max is telling the narrator about his difficult relationship with Thomas since his mother died when he was a young boy. How he is trying to be good parent to his young daughter who is struggling with an eating disorder and poignantly, about a difficult phone call when his father was ill and he thought he would never see him again.

“I couldn’t shake the suspicion - a suspicion that was a childish form of hope - that he had taken it in, that it hadn’t disappeared, that it was transcribed somewhere inside him.”

This intelligent and beautifully written book non judgementally reflects on our dependence on smart devices, their impacts on our relationships, their limitations, possible harms and their effects on how we may or may not remember.
The author allow us to imagine the length of time lapsed and the events between the three parts
It is a book that I will be thinking about for a long time.


My sincere thanks to Granta Publications for this advanced copy via NetGalley.
Profile Image for Jamad .
1,074 reviews18 followers
November 29, 2025
Transcription is a compact, sharply focused novella in three parts (or at least three loosely distinguished segments), which begins when the unnamed narrator travels to Providence, Rhode Island — his purpose: to conduct what is intended as the final published interview with his former mentor, a ninety-year-old academic and artist of considerable gravitas. This initial segment gives the book a deceptively simple premise, but the collapse of his plans — after he drops his phone in the sink and arrives at his mentor’s house without a recording device — sets the novel on a subtly disorienting course.

Stripped of modern convenience, the narrator is forced to rely on pen and paper — a constraint that underlies the book’s deeper reflection on memory, technology, and what it means to “record” a life. Lerner draws out a tense emotional triangle between the narrator, the elderly mentor (Thomas), and Max — the mentor’s son and the narrator’s old friend. Through their interactions and silences, the novel becomes a meditation on how technology both enables and impoverishes human connection and memory.

The prose is understated, elegant and suggestive, with a dreamlike quality that feels deliberate: the lack of a recording device becomes a metaphor for loss, absence and the ineluctable fragility of recollection. As others have noted, this gives the novel a Kafka-like edge — resonances of ambiguity and psychological tension haunt the narrative.

Transcription has been compared by some to Audition. It remains to be seen whether Transcription will find its way onto 2026 literary awards shortlists. I suspect it might.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
32 reviews
December 6, 2025
I much preferred this to Leaving the Atocha Station, which I read this time last year and which felt bleak - reminding me too closely of the worst kinds of men in society. The central male characters in this novel had much more complexity, or more sympathetic traits and flaws, which made it more of a compelling read.
I loved the section in the museum with the glass flowers and the character of Thomas's poetic register. I also appreciated the way the novel handled modern technology and how it shapes our experience of the world. It reminded me of a Guardian long-read James Bridle wrote about Pepper pig and unboxing videos — genuinely terrifying stuff. I'm more of a fan of Lerner's poetry and not convinced that this fully holds up as an entirely successful novel but I think there are moments of brilliance.
Profile Image for Ben Dutton.
Author 2 books50 followers
October 21, 2025
The latest novel by Ben Lerner, begins with the narrator heading to Providence to interview Thomas, a nonagenarian artist and father to Max, a college friend of the narrator. Whilst interviewing Thomas, the narrators phone is submerged in water and the interview has to take place with pen and paper. From this Lerner crafts a novel which interrogates societal shifts in its relationship with technology, muses on the position of art in the world, along with a lot more. Despite it's depth of subject matter, this is a short novel that packs a punch, leaving the reader with lots to ponder. Fully engaging at all times, I read this in one sitting and am still thinking about some of its themes a few days later. A very fine novel indeed.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.
12 reviews1 follower
October 25, 2025
This is a novella in three parts about an elderly academic and his relationships with a mentee (the narrator) and his son (a friend of the mentee).

I enjoyed it as I was reading it, but looking back I also think it is more than the sum of its parts, seeing as it explores lots of oppositions (public vs private personae, academic vs family lives, imperfect memory vs dispositive recordings) and the interests and concerns of various characters, which creates rich opportunities for analysis once you have read the book.

The writing switches between florid and sparse in a controlled and effective way. I have the sense that some readers may not find the plot sufficiently interesting, but I thought it was engaging.

I am grateful to have received a review copy from Granta and NetGalley.
Profile Image for Gergely.
6 reviews3 followers
October 31, 2025
Ben Lerner’s Transcription feels both intimate and disorienting, like remembering a dream mid-conversation. Short but expansive, Transcription lingers like a meditation on what it means to record, remember, and really see each other in a digital age.

The narrator travels to Providence to interview his old mentor, Thomas, but when he drops his phone in a sink, that small accident unravels his trust, his past, and his ability to truly record what’s real. Through the tense triangle between Thomas and his son Max, Lerner examines how digital devices both preserve and erase who we are.

I found this novel really engaging! My first Lerner, and definitely not my last.

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the eARC.
9 reviews1 follower
October 23, 2025
Nice, quick read. Felt more 10:04 then Lerner's last work. Need to re-read.
Profile Image for Bearen.
44 reviews7 followers
December 6, 2025
Read for work. It's alright. Ben Lerner's prose always astounds me, but I find his applications of it here to be rather uninteresting compared to what he's come up with before.
Profile Image for esmereadsalot.
33 reviews187 followers
December 13, 2025
ben lerner you will always be famous

brb off to accidentally drop my phone in the sink
16 reviews5 followers
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
December 18, 2025
ben lerner makes it look so easy! so much in so little
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