I’ve been wrestling with how to review ::Jonathan Lethem::’s Girl In Landscape a little, though not because I didn’t like it, I liked it very much. It was oddly different from most of what I’ve read lately, and the ending left me feeling somewhat ambiguous.

The book is third person, but told pretty much exclusively from the perspective of Pella Marsh, the 13 year old oldest child of the Marsh family who, after the father’s failed re-election bid, moves with her family to the Planet of the Archbuilders – though not before her mother dies from a brain tumor. Between these events, puberty and a virus (created by the archbuilders) which allows her to possess/merge with one of the planet’s native life forms Pella is dealing with a lot to say the least.

I’m always a bit skeptical when a male author writes from a female point of view – something my wife who majored in Women’s Studies taught me – but I think Lethem pulls it off quite well. Whether that’s because of or in spite of Pella’s age isn’t clear to me – I’ve never tried writing from a female point of view and barely recall being a 13 year old boy let alone have a guess what goes on in the mind of a girl of the same age.

Through the eyes of the ‘house deer’ Pella witnesses many things that shock her and strip away her innocence. She is both repulsed and fascinated by what she sees, and she comes of age through these experiences and her losses. Lethem nicely avoids piling on tiresome angst or ridiculous behavior that we so often find with child characters, but instead writes Pella as a real, believable person.

The story is, despite its setting and protagonist, basically a western. The Planet of the Archbuilders is the frontier. There is no formal government or even law enforcement, only insular intolerance, frontier justice, and a one-class ‘school’ that meets in someone’s living room.

The setting is one where the various characters can self-discover or hide from themselves, but rarely manage something inbetween, and those who want neither end up leaving.

The only thing I would fault Girl for is a somewhat weak ending. I would have liked a bit more dénoument given how the plot ended up begin resolved. As I alluded to in the first paragraph, Lethem’s style is very distinctive, and I plan on reading more by him (in fact I’ve already checked out a book of his short stories from the local library).