“In the late winter of 2006, I returned to my home town and bought 612 acres of land on the far western edge of the county.” So begins, innocently enough, J. Robert Lennon’s gripping and brilliant new novel. Awkward, guarded, and more than a little adamant about his need for privacy, Eric Loesch sets about renovating a rundown old house in the small, upstate New York town where he spent his childhood. When he inspects the title to the property, however, he discovers that there is a plot of dense forest smack in the middle of his land that he does not own. What’s more, the name of the person it belongs to is blacked out… The answer to what—and who—might lie at the heart of Loesch’s property stands at the center of this daring and riveting novel from an author whose writing, according to Ann Patchett, “has enough electricity to light up the country.”
eMusic Review 0
12.09.10
J. Robert Lennon, Castle
2010 | Label: Iambik Audio Inc.
You know the story: Man comes back to his roots. Man buys 612-acre tract in rural New York. Man renovates house on tract. Man discovers giant granite monolith on his property and starts seeing freaky ghost-deer. Welcome to Kafka, as sifted through J. Robert Lennon’s prodigious imagination. Just as in Kafka’s famous novel of the same name, Lennon’s protagonist, Eric Loesch, becomes obsessed with the giant granite monolith — his castle — that is always in sight but which he can never quite reach. As he investigates, he discovers that the castle exists on a small island of land within his 612 acres that is owned by a mysterious person that has been blacked out of the records. But Loesch keeps digging, and when he finally discovers who it is, “those words caused my stomach to turn over.” In this surreal, slightly gothic tale, Lennon ably ratchets up the tension while letting us watch as Loesch slowly pieces together his personal history as he comes to figure out what the castle is. Lennon takes us deep into Loesch’s psyche and his battles with his father (with overtones of humanity’s battles with God), building Loesch into a rich, allegorical character worthy of a fine novel. In the end, Castle makes for a satisfying, and at times harrowing, journey into one man’s heart of darkness — a psychological thriller that doubles as a potent fable for an age filled with massive oil spills and the ghosts of Abu Ghraib.
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Mind games in the woods
This is an unusual book. I find that even having thought about it quite a lot I still can't sort out what was "fact" from fantasy. The narrative kept me moving - wanting to find out what would happen next and why things were happening, but I felt discontented at not being able to determine ultimately what the novel was about. Was it a psychological thriller, describing the disintegration of a damaged personality, or an allegory for contemporary America, or both? Probably it would need an American reader/listenerto give a considered opinion. The flat, even-paced narration I found quite disturbing but it did suit the atmosphere of the novel. The whole thing remains with me like a partially remembered and unsettling dream. Would I recommend it? I'll have to think about that!
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