From the тАЬmost talented writer of his generationтАЭ (The New York Times), a lightning flash of a novel that is at once a gripping emotional drama and a brilliant examination of the devices, digital and literary, we use to storeтАФor to eraseтАФour memories.
The narrator of Ben LernerтАЩs new novel has traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor and the father of his college friend, Max. Thomas is a giant in the arts who seems to hail тАЬfrom the future and the past simultaneouslyтАЭ and who тАЬreenchants the airтАЭ when he speaks. But the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink. He arrives at ThomasтАЩs house with no recording device, a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess.
What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is both the unforgettable story of the triangle formed by Thomas, Max, and the narrator, and a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich or impoverish our connection to one another, that store or obliterate memory. Haunted by Kafka (there are echoes of тАЬThe JudgementтАЭ and тАЬA Hunger ArtistтАЭ), but utterly contemporary, Lerner combines trenchant insight with lyric mystery. Ultimately, Transcription demonstrates what only a work of fiction can record.
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