J. Robert Lennon was seen as a rising star of American writing in the late 1990s with his debut novel The Light of Falling Stars in 1997, and On The Night Plain in 2001, but he seemed to disappear after that, at least from my view, and this new novel looked really intriguing. It's a strange, almost science fiction scenario - a woman is driving home from visiting her deceased son's grave when something changes, and she finds herself the same person but different. She's driving a different car, her body has changed, she's wearing different clothes, and when she gets home, she finds she's married to the same man, but their relationship is not the same, nor is their furniture. But most unsettling is that her dead son is still alive, and her other son is markedly different, and there are strange family tensions she doesn't understand. She fakes her way through this new existence, while trying to understand what has happened, and struggling with the possibility of making better choices this time. Has she had a psychotic break, or entered a parallel universe?
The novel unfolds at an irresistible pace, questions are asked rather than answered, and the reader is forced, without quite noticing, to examine his or her own life. It's an extraordinary piece of writing, but I have to say, in the end, that if you are uncomfortable with ambiguity, it will leave you frustrated. Online reviews are deeply polarised, and I can understand why. It certainly left me perplexed, and moved.