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Amnesia Moon
Amnesia Moon
Amnesia Moon
Audiobook7 hours

Amnesia Moon

Written by Jonathan Lethem

Narrated by Scott Sowers

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

Often favorably compared to contemporaries Michael Chabon and Lev Grossman, New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Lethem won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In his post-apocalyptic novel Amnesia Moon, he introduces a young man named Chaos who can seemingly remake reality in his dreams. Setting off on a grand adventure, Chaos attempts to learn the secrets behind the world's destruction. "Lethem tempers a liberal dose of quirky surrealism with interesting, believable characterizations and a compelling, imaginative story line."-Booklist
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 29, 2011
ISBN9781461842996
Author

Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem is the bestselling author of twelve novels, including The Arrest, The Feral Detective, The Fortress of Solitude, and Motherless Brooklyn, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. He currently teaches creative writing at Pomona College in California.

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Reviews for Amnesia Moon

Rating: 3.453667896138996 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

259 ratings18 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This road story iss part Kafka and part P K Dick and all Jonathan Lethem. A rollicking narrative of a future that is both nightmarish and entertaining. It is a world where the truth of everything is elusive at best.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    And if you did but was in a drawing from the beginning, can you tell van. What up! Awful. The ending was like he just got tired of telling a story. I expected a better ending call me an explanation of everything that has gone on… And yet there with nothing. And it is a fat guy in a weird dream
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Imagination, invention run wild. A road trip through a troubled mindscape. Furry girl, green fog, clock people, trashed people: the future of Mr. Lethem when he was young. Before he got to Brooklyn. He travels well but does not know how to end it. I prefer a bang to a waco wyoming.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Since I just re-read 'Motherless Brooklyn' I thought I'd get around to reading the sci-fi book of Lethem's that's been sitting on my shelf. Unfortunately, I didn't like it nearly so much.
    'Amnesia Moon' is really a seriously wanna-be-Philip-K.-Dick book. If you really like Dick and his trippy perspectives on things, you might love this book. I thought it had some interesting moments - but, as a whole, it didn't work for me.
    It's a post-apocalyptic scenario. There's definitely been some kind of disaster, but no one seems to remember exactly what happened. No one really seems to remember much. Everett Moon, aka Chaos, etc, leaves the derelict town he believes he's been in for the last five years, along with a mutant teen, and embarks on a journey... it seems that everything has become very "localized" - different areas are completely different realities, possibly controlled by those individuals whose dreams have gained the power to influence reality. Moon seems to be searching for something - but it's hard to identify what you want when you can't even remember your old loves or friends...
    Like I said, there were some interesting scenes - the "green" town is memorable, and the idea of accessing and communicating with people by injecting drugs was kinda interesting (if, again, Dick-ian). However, the book has no conclusion whatsoever, let alone an explanation. I felt like the author couldn't think of a satisfying way to explain what had happened - so he just decided not to bother with an ending at all. Disappointing.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Jonathan Lethem has certainly written more tightly constructed works (Gun, With Occasional Music and Motherless Brooklyn), and some truly great essays, but Amnesia Moon falls into the unfocused category which also includes You Don't Love Me Yet and the sprawling Fortress of Solitude. The weird dream world Lethem creates is enjoyable, and every world we visit echoes nicely of Plato's Cave, but if there is a punchline to the whole work, it, I've missed it. In my reading life, I have missed important bits before, but in this case I'm fairly certain there's nothing to "get" in the first place!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Jonathon Lethem’s second novel, Amnesia Moon, centres around a man named Chaos living in the post-apocalyptic town of Hatfork, Wyoming. The bombs have fallen, society has crumbled, the sky is tinted with radioactivity and the mutated townsfolk are reliant on a tyrant named Kellogg for their food. Less than 30 pages into the book, after making him admit that he can’t remember how long ago the bombs fell or what he was doing when they did, Kellogg convinces Chaos that the truth of their world is “a little more complicated,” and Chaos sets out on a post-apocalyptic roadtrip to uncover the truth.Lethem’s first novel, Gun With Occasional Music, felt like a neat concept for a short story that had been stretched out into a novel. Amnesia Moon feels more like a collection of short stories patched together to make an extremely surreal novel, and I was unsurprised to learn, after finishing it, that this is precisely the case. Chaos travels across an America devastated by wildly different apocalyptic events – everybody agrees something bad has happened, but it appears to be different everywhere he goes. The only unifying element is that each location is dominated by a “dreamer,” somebody forcing their version of reality upon others. The different locales are all drawn from various unpublished short stories Lethem had written.This is a lazy way to write a novel, but I found Amnesia Moon readable enough, and it has a particularly good ending which suggests that one of the more disturbing realities is in fact the truth. It deals quite a lot with dreams and memories and amnesia, which I normally find tedious, but Lethem is a skillful enough writer that Amnesia Moon is rarely tiresome. I didn’t see much point to it, as a novel, but he’s a good writer and I’ll keep reading him. I look forward to when I get to the point in his career when he’s actually writing novels rather than short stories in disguise.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Finished this read in three days. Narration was good, story has potential but I was left wondering WTF. From start to finish I didn't know what was reality and what was dreamality. There are actually three good story lines in the book, but all put together wasn't a good idea in my opinion. I liked it, I didn't like it, I don't know, was I dreaming when I read it?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Set in a post apocalyptic USA, nothing is quite as it seems. Chaos, aka Everett, the main character cannot remember exactly who he is let alone what caused the break from the world before to the world now, and he cannot find satisfactory answers in Hatfork Wyoming, the dilapidated town populated with mutants where he has a position of some sort of oversight, so he sets of to find answers, taking with him a young mutant girl. He may not find all the answers he's looking for, but along the way he does find love and hope, although it may not exactly match the dreams he's been having, the dreams that started his doubting.In Amnesia Moon dreams and reality become confused in a sort of modern day Alice in Wonderland; funny, thought provoking and highly imaginative.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Chaos, also known as Moon, lives in a post-apocalyptic America, or perhaps some other reality. Reality, however, is shaped by dreamers, and Chaos is a latent dreamer. He sets out on a quest to find a better way to live seeking not only truth but also, as it turns out, community and family.One way to read the book is as an analogy about postmodern society. In this view, reality is created by us, that is by social consensus. This certainly includes dysfunctional aspects. In the book, the dysfunctional aspects dominate, e.g. a broken down post-apocalyptic setting, a green fog, and a TV celebrity centric society. This is particularly frustrating, since better options exist, such as represented by the futuristic cars.A thought-provoking, entertaining read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Many books are about the power of dreams. This one makes it feel real.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Amnesia Moon is a wacky and sometimes incomprehensible tale of a post-apocalyptic America in which no one can agree exactly what caused the collapse of civilization. For some, it was nuclear war; for others, it was aliens; and for one town, it was a green mist that blinded the populace. The hero, alternately named Everett Moon or Chaos, wanders through these places, journeying from one surreal post-apocalyptic community to the next. There is only one constant: Some people have the power to control others’ dreams or even their waking thoughts, and those people are in charge wherever Chaos goes. In fact, Chaos is a dreamer himself, and his traveling companion is a young mutant girl covered with fur whom he may actually have dreamed up. We never find out exactly what happened to this world, but the story is in the journey, so we don’t really care. Lethem’s unique brand of storytelling shines in this early novel of his.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    More like Ridley Walker than Catcher in the Rye (the book the blurbs compare it to), this was a fast, confusing read. The plot promises but does not deliver, so I felt somewhat let down. Questions are dangled like carrots in front of the reader, but they are not answered. A bit too derivative of PK Dick, but a fun read. BTW, it has sat on my shelf for ten years, since picking it up as a hc remainder from Daedalus back in the 90's. Finally read it! But not in a hurry to read more by this author (though Fortress of Solitude looks interesting).
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book was an unexpected surprise. I was in a book store in Princeton, NJ and this was randomly placed on the bargain shelf. I purchased, after reading the first chapter, and I couldn't put it down. It was so bizarre and "out" that I found myself locked in. This was my first Lethem, and he instantly became one of my favorites. Since first reading this, I have read most of his work, and also urge people to check out his website - which is just as strange has his novels. There is mystery in Lethem's thought process that interests me. From evolved animals in "Gun, With Occasional Music" to a strange amnesia inducing gas cloud in "Amnesia Moon" his literary concepts are nothing short of specific and intriguing. His main character in "Amnesia Moon" is aptly named Chaos, and has an ability to control the world subconsciously via his dreams... A very eastern thought oriented concept of everyone being connected through subconcious... I file this in: VERY COOL!After reading Lethem, one might find it interesting to read the Tao Te Ching, or the Book of Change, the I Ching. Both might help shed light on what Lethem is truly trying to get at in this book. I hope I have it right, too, because I might be wrong.... but after all, that is the beauty of art anyway... right?
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Some interesting parts, but eventually I was bored with all the strangeness (and I'm not easily bored with strangeness). Did enjoy the bit about the Macdonalonians.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Eh. I have read better authors and his name is Phillip K. Dick. His writing style is too chaotic and not chaotic in the poetic way. He is trying too hard to be different. I wouldn't recommend this book.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Honestly, one of my least favorite books from this author. It just doesn't seem very cohesive.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Kind of a Wizard of Oz meets a road trip while doing crack.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Interesting take on the post-Apocalypse/mind-bending reality genre, where reality becomes literally subjective. Sometimes gets a little too obtuse, but there’s some really good moments and ideas. Letham’s got a weird imagination, as seen in another book of his I read awhile back, Gun, With Occasional Music. Possibly not for everyone, but if you like PK Dick, you should try one of these.