Lucky Alan by Jonathan Lethem review – all the lonely people

The nine stories in the American’s new collection exist in the same isolation as their characters

In the opening story of Jonathan Lethem’s latest collection a newly married couple are described as “more and more like figures in a snow globe, viewable but uncontactable from the human realm”. It is an arresting image of isolation and loneliness, and one that deftly sets the tone for Lucky Alan & Other Stories.

The stories fall broadly into two camps: the realist and the surrealist or absurd. The surrealist stories are, as one would expect from Lethem, both stylistically playful and narratively experimental; in one, Their Back Pages, fictional characters from cartoons and picture books are marooned on a desert island together like a comic-strip adaptation of The Tempest. In another, the conscience of a blog rails against those leaving critical comments on it (The Dreaming Jaw, the Salivating Ear).

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