A collection from Jonathan Lethem features seven major stories published since his last collection, along with his work spanning more than three decades. A major new story, 'The Red Sun School of Thoughts,' never published before, follows a teenage boy coming to terms with figures of authority and power—those in both his biological family and in the family he creates for himself.
Some of the pieces are little more than exercises ... Others remind us how consistently ambitious Lethem has been in his practice of the short form ... Program’s Progress’ is an entertaining satirical allegory ... As a short-fiction writer, Lethem was at his strongest — his most limber, lucid, inventive and wise — for around a decade starting in the early to mid-2000s ... The Empty Room,a delicious fable about domestic clutter … resembles a Don DeLillo take on Raymond Carver’s Why Don’t You Dance? ... A good Lethem story exhausts the juiciest permutations of a scenario while managing not to outstay its welcome ... Wickedly unnerving ... Excellent.
