FAMILIAR - Softcover

'I cannot help but put it in with the current publishing hot potato of literary, excoriating thrillers such as Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn et al, with a family right from Lionel Shriver. For once a clever, arty premise has delivered in literary spades, while remaining engaging and open to the end, and this really is a title worth recommending' TheBookBag.com

'J Robert Lennon's new novel, his first book to be published here for almost a decade, is either a sleek piece of science fiction, or a sleek portrait of psychological crack-up, or a sleek reflection on IT, or a sleek case-study appended to a thesis in epistemology, or consciousness studies, or quantum physics. Much of the book s excitement turns on discovering which of its successive debts to established genres and academic disciplines will prove the most important. It s a riddle that never quite gets solved, a mature decision on Lennon's part which leaves the reader feeling light-headed but not underfed' Evening Standard

'This highly convincing nightmare reads like a thriller; Lennon is painfully truthful about grief and parenthood' Kate Saunders, The Times

'A writer with enough electricity to light up the country' Ann Patchett

'A literary puzzle, a marvellous trick of the mind ... as tightly wound as a great Alfred Hitchcock movie' LA Times

'So breakneck and harrowing, so grab-you-by-the-lapels astonishing, that you may not notice until nearly the end how many questions about your own life it makes you ask. Haunting, beautiful, a horror story about parenting, complicated-it's a wonderful book' --Elizabeth McCracken

'Irresistible ... it invigorates some of drearier procedures of conventional fiction ... a meditation on family and identity likely to stir brain and heart alike' Observer

'Lennon uses his sci-fi vehicle to create eerie fiction. The notion of parallel universes ... prompts reflection upon the aleatory nature of our own life, in all its uncanniness' Independent on Sunday

'A tremendous novel. One you'll read and want to recommend. One you'll come back to ... One that should give Lennon a major boost if there is any justice in the world' Bookmunch

'Beguiling ... like all very best fiction, the novel reflects and refracts the reader's life, raising many more questions than it answers' Bookgroup.info

'It provokes the reader into thinking about how we take the good in our lives for granted and how little newness we experience' John Self's Asylum

'A terrific novel: psychologically subtle and philosophically supple'Daily Telegraph

'A quirky and ultimately gripping existential thriller' --Big Issue Scotland

'Irresistible ... it invigorates some of drearier procedures of conventional fiction ... a meditation on family and identity likely to stir brain and heart alike' Observer

'Lennon uses his sci-fi vehicle to create eerie fiction. The notion of parallel universes ... prompts reflection upon the aleatory nature of our own life, in all its uncanniness' Independent on Sunday

'A tremendous novel. One you'll read and want to recommend. One you'll come back to ... One that should give Lennon a major boost if there is any justice in the world' Bookmunch

'Beguiling ... like all very best fiction, the novel reflects and refracts the reader's life, raising many more questions than it answers' Bookgroup.info

'It provokes the reader into thinking about how we take the good in our lives for granted and how little newness we experience' John Self's Asylum

'A terrific novel: psychologically subtle and philosophically supple' Daily Telegraph

--Daily Tel --Independent on Sunday

'A novel that imposes itself on the imagination from the opening sentences ... Lennon's brisk prose is both vivid and precise; the dialogue is clear and authentic, often funny. In fact, considering that this is a deadly serious, often bewildering and affecting novel, Familiar is witty and satiric. It is obvious that its genius lies in Lennon's feel for metaphysical contradictions that consistently undercut the realism ... a similar approach to the theme of parallel universes and altered experiences within shifting time frames has also been explored in novels such as Haruki Murakami's 1Q84 or Tom McCarthy's Remainder, neither of which achieves the unsettling mastery of Lennon's far shorter and infinitely superior novel, which could inspire a brilliant screenplay ... Familiar is fresh and original; it is also disturbing in its strangeness, because that strangeness is eerily real'Irish Times

'Lennon is an American writer whose novels delicately probe the psychology of their protagonists...In Familiar Lennon uses his sci-fi vehicle to create eerie fiction. The notion of parallel universes becomes a metaphor for life choices and their results...immersion in her alternate realities prompts reflection upon the aleatory nature of our own life, in all its uncanniness'Independent on Sunday

'I loved J Robert Lennon's rather spooky novel Familiar ... it's a story Hitchcock might have made'Evening Standard, Books of the Year 2013

'Familiar is a terrific novel: psychologically subtle and philosophically supple. It will leave you with a heightened awareness of the strange cracks and wormholes on the peripheries of life'
Daily Telegraph

'A writer with enough electricity to light up the country' Ann Patchett

'A literary puzzle, a marvellous trick of the mind...as tightly wound as a great Alfred Hitchcock movie'
LA Times

'So breakneck and harrowing, so grab-you-by-the-lapels astonishing, that you may not notice until nearly the end how many questions about your own life it makes you ask'
Elizabeth McCracken

'J. Robert Lennon's beautifully written new novel bristles with menace and suspense - a terrific and disturbing read' John Harding

'This highly convincing nightmare reads like a thriller; Lennon is painfully truthful about grief and parenthood' Kate Saunders

'Tight in focus as well as in construction ... an otherworldly narrative' Evening Standard

'Dazzling' Guardian

'Irresistible ... a meditation on family and identity likely to stir brain and heart alike' Observer

'There won't be a better English-language novel published this year ... this is a brilliant, bruising novel about how we make our way in the world. Everyone should read it' --Civilian Magazine

A woman's life becomes a mystifying puzzle in this electrifying literary thriller, now available in paperback.