The Feral Detective

By Jonathan Lethem

Ecco     2018

336 pages     Literary?

OK, so I am way confused. What did I just finish reading? The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem. Was it a mystery? Was it dystopia? Was it political? Was it a love story? Four days after finishing it, and I am still not sure. I read it because it was on a bunch of lists and also because I had just finished Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult, and I thought I was going to read something lighter. WRONG!!!

Here’s a quick synopsis of the book.  Phoebe Siegler, a consummate New Yorker, travels to the Mojave Desert in search of Arabella, a friend’s missing daughter and an 18-year-old dropout of Reed College. She hires hirsute Charles Heist, the “feral detective,” who lives with three dogs and an opossum. Quickly falling for his woodsy charms, Phoebe travels with Heist to the far reaches of the desert, where the mostly female Rabbit group is engaged in a long standoff with the male Bear group. To save Arabella, Heist will have to do battle with the charismatic Bear leader, called Solitary Love, as Phoebe learns to question her assumptions here on “the far side of the Neoliberal Dream.” 

There is a lot of questioning of life after Trump. (The book was written right after the election.) The Publisher Weekly reviewer suggests that “The novel feels like it was written as a kind of therapy in the aftermath of the 2016 election” but the election references scarcely engage the reader--like just more of the weirdness of the plot and the characters. By the same token, there are a lot of references to Leonard Cohen, in very reverential tones. Why bring Leonard Cohen into this mess?

Phoebe is a ditzy character, sometimes entertaining, but mostly an enigma. Why in the world is she here—a New York girl in the Mohave desert. Ostensibly she is there to find her friend’s daughter, Arabella, who has disappeared. Phoebe is here because she quit her journalism job in disgust after the 2016 election. She is not someone that the average reader can identify with—well, with the exception of the Trump stuff! But then neither is Charles Heist, the private investigator she hires to help her look for Arabella. Ditz that she is, she immediately falls in love with Heist, so when she loses him in the desert, we are not sure who she is now looking for—Arabella or Heist. The plot is disjointed and crazy.

The best part of the novel are some of the written descriptions. All the settings in the book are very elegantly written. The reader can visualize exactly where the characters are at any given moment. They are perhaps too eloquent for the crazy plot. As the New York Times reviewer says, “There’s a good book lurking in this material. The plot is shaggy and complicated; so much so that even the author loses interest in it.” Here is a sample quote to illustrate what I mean.  Laird and Phoebe have just left the highway to head out into the desert. “We were hardly the first to go here, though the marks on this Etch A Sketch surface grew directionless and baroque. The joyriding treads inscribed grooves on the planet, suggesting the possibility of a tire-based language with communication with drones or satellites above, for beaming meaning back at passing contrails.”

I knew the name Jonathan Lethem, although I had never read any of his books. Most reviewers complained that this was a poor representation of the author. Part of me is curious to see if that is the case, but on the other hand, I really don’t think I want to attempt any more.

When I was two, my post-war Marine father was stationed in the Mohave Desert dismantling the Marine war machine. I lived there for one year. When I was in my 50s I went back to the desert to see if I could find where I lived as a toddler. Found the base, but the Quonset huts had been replaced by nice condos. You know what, after The Feral Detective, I have no desire to return.