Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Fiction Tuesday -Familiar



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.-storyline



I found it impossible to put down. It grips you and doesn't let go. Best (or worst) of all, it makes you actually start to feel the way the characters feel-strange, on edge, questioning everything. This isn't a horror novel, but I found the last third of the book, or thereabouts, completely terrifying.-C



I found myself feeling unsettled several times while reading FAMILIAR. The idea that I could find myself transferred into a body not my own, with all the details of my life changed--except for those people who had been familiar to me--was unnerving. And I feel I can't reveal too many details without spoiling this great experience for anyone else.-Lorraine



"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.-Gary


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