This Shape We're In

by Jonathan Lethem

Lethem, author of the bestselling Motherless Brooklyn , returns in concentrated form - packing twice the adventure into one-eighth the pages. This book could be some kind of allegory book, but it might not be an allegory book at all. It involves people and drinking and people looking for a giant eye. It is among the best things Mr. Lethem has written.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Contemporary, Speculative Fiction, Novels

55 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2001

About the author

Jonathan Allen Lethem (born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer.

His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels. In 1999, Lethem published Motherless Brooklyn, a National Book Critics Circle Award-winning novel that achieved mainstream success. In 2003, he published The Fortress of Solitude, which became a New York Times Best Seller.

In 2005, he received a MacArthur Fellowship

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

Senryu Review:

Squelching round a shape
to find son at the third eye
is what's happening here

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Jonathan Lethem, and I have an unusually high tolerance for quirkiness, but I really wasn't invested in this...story? fable?...until the very end. The narrator is engaging enough, and there are nice absurd flourishes, but the ending is where it's at, and then it's over so quickly that it almost hurts. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who isn't already a fan of Lethem, and even then I think I'd only recommend it to fans of his earlier, more "genre-y" works...and even THEN I'm still not entirely sure because I'm a big fan of the genre-y stuff and I'm obviously rather conflicted about this one.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 2 out of 5]

The novella is about a former General with a drinking problem sent by his shrewish wife to rescue their son from chanting as a cultist for something called the Third Eye. Oh yes, and they're all microscopic humanish creatures living inside a horse. So the general travels to the eye where his son is and along the way encounters militia drinking dens, bizarre orgies, barbecues with the horse's meat being used, and a Central Command gone mad.

I have no idea what the book is supposed to be about. It's a brief 55 page novella with large font size so the confusion is over soon but the whole thing is so strange it doesn't make any sense. Why are these humans living inside a horse? What's the business with the Third Eye? Why do all the humans have references to our world and live like we do only inside a horse?

It's bonkers like a Vonnegut-esque story but really is a weak effort from a usually great writer. "Motherless Brooklyn" and "Gun, with Occasional Music" are both excellent novels and I highly recommend those rather than this meandering tale of nothing.

[Rand]

An oblique nutshell containing the kernels for comprehending existence, consciousness & the cosmos on multiple levels.

The sort of funny little story that sticks with you and takes root in your heart many years after having read & disowned it in indifference.

A rereading is more overdue than my last batch of library books.

[Wes Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very entertaining novella with written with hints of Barthleme. A garbage-hiding former general who is one of many ??? living inside a body (known as the "Shape") is incited to find his rebellious son who has taken to chanting in the left eye. What starts out as an honest search and rescue becomes a soul-searching mission for the former general, who will lead the ??? in an all out revolution. Top notch work, kinda wish there was a little more...

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was the first thing that I read by Lethem and it was very disappointing. Fortunately, I managed to ignore my feelings for this work and moved on to Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress Of Solitude - both books that I really loved, especially MB.

[S.H. Butler · Rating 3 out of 5]

a silly bit of fluff from jonathan lethem. fun if you're a lethem fan, but otherwise fairly throw-away and hardly worth the publication as a single work. lethem's "allegory" seems more like quirkiness for the sake of quirkiness.

[Daniel Hagedorn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, I liked parts of this book, some of the language and the expressions, but other parts I was just a little bit unimpressed. That's probably just me. I've been reading a lot of so-called heavier stuff lately, and not this book isn't in some way, because it oozes of an idea about life, kind of in a way similar to the short piece I reading now by E.M. Forster about the machine. I suppose it's fine. I suppose I could read this book in a different time and place, thinking probably then, it is as people say, remarkable or the next best thing. Today, though, how I am, this world I look out onto, amidst the turmoil, so to speak, it was all just okay.

[Teaandbooksplease · Rating 2 out of 5]

Um, I'm not sure what on earth this novella was about... I usually like the way Lethem plunges his readers head first into his worlds and pulls them along until they get the hang of it, but with only 55 pages, there's not really time to get a feel for the story before it's over -- in a confusing conclusion. Fantasy? Allegory? Truncated novel? Not sure what Lethem's getting at here...

[Mickie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amusing. I envision the characters finally releasing themselves as mutated viruses to destroy the mindless humans.

[Kane Powell · Rating 4 out of 5]

it’s a metaphor… for…. ?????

[Raphaela Strohmayer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have absoluteley no clue what this was about and I just did not enjoy this.

[Daniel C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lethem has proven himself to be a virtuoso of story-telling. His books, for the most part, inhabit a plane of existence that defies much classification, and they wield their creativity with the force of a sledgehammer but the precision of a scalpel. Although his work can sometimes be uneven, it is always entertaining, and certainly never average or boring (to be fair, though, his short stories are hit-and-miss).

This little nugget is, for the most part, a success, but it also comes across as only partially-formed. And although it is, as usual, beautifully and skillfully told, it seems to be less a fully realized tale and more a creative exercise. Lethem, here, is just stretching is literary limbs. Consider listening to a highly touted operatic singer practicing her scales: it's still beautiful singing, and it may even be fun to listen to, but it isn't a song, and there's just not that much to it.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very quirky little read I found off of McSweeney's, This Shape We're In is short enough to finish in a single serving and strangely gripping, forcing a familiar, irritating sense of small town normality into a setting made primarily out of entrails and cruddy light fixtures. Dialogue is clipped and intelligent, and moves the story along at a brisk pace. Vital life questions (sex, death, obsolescence, human dignity, etc.) are acknowledged, pushed around some, maybe given a handshake, and left unsettled but, hey, we've already figured all those issues out for ourselves back in high school anyway. Full of nostalgia and something kind of resembling hope, there are absolutely worse ways to spend an evening. If you see a copy lying around, go for it.

[Vicki · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lethem's Pynchonesque fever dream bombards the reader with rapid fire wordplay, much of involving the inventive juggling of cliches. But what does it all mean? The Falstaffian protagonist is travelling through a large body a la The Fantastic Voyage. At one point, he glimpses out through the body's eye and sees the Statue of Liberty. At another point, it's possible the body is actually a Trojan horse. So, ummm ... "This Shape We're In" is short and sufficiently fast paced that it can be visited numerous times. Will repeated visits be worth it in terms of further understanding what this allegory is all about?

[Spencer Madsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

pleasant enough to read, but sorta fails on all fronts

seems to want to comment on a lot of things

religion, patriotism, ideology, innocence, the statue of liberty is represented briefly

but all these things are touched on so lightly and quickly that any sort of allegory lethem intended to set up seems forgotten by the end

its got some enjoyable bits of language and a somewhat likable protagonist in an interesting setting, and its quick to read. frustrating to try and derive meaning from though.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Weird and worth it. Take an hour for yourself: it's the craziest little adventure you didn't prepare for to a destination you thought was phooey--if you ever bothered to think about it in the first place. This is 60 pages I reread every couple of years. It's always good, but nothing like hitting those last pages for the first time. It's all the wackiness he usually musters boiled down to something you can drink with a beer. This Shape We're In always makes me smile.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reminded me of Amnesia Moon a little, in that it was hard to figure out what was going on, but it didn't make me as crazy as that one (probably because it was shorter). The fact that I'm pretty sure Lethem didn't know exactly what was going on either makes me feel a little bit better. At the end, I was pretty sure they were living inside some sort of trojan horse...? Now I'm not so sure...It was entertaining!

[Benjamin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a (very) short story in a single printing, a bit weird, but hey, it's McSweeney's. The story is unique and there is a certain mystery that keeps the quest in which the characters are engaged interesting. I really liked what I took away as the message to wake up from our rampant consumerism and commercial fascinations that masquerade as culture, get off our butts, and do something. I definitely wasn't blown away by any means, but I'll read Lethem again.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Brief and nifty. At fifty-five pages and with largish print, I think that in some other format, say The New Yorker, this would not be so much a novella as a long short story,

Perhaps the people at McSweeney's have figured something out. Is this what their readership is searching for? Books that remind them of the first "chapter books" they read in fourth grade? Do they remember their proud parents telling neighbors, "We so pleased with Joshua. He's begun reading chapter books."

[Beckie · Rating 4 out of 5]

jeremy offered this book as a counterexample when i became suspicious that his dislike of the endings of the boy detective fails and special topics in calamity physics were indicative of a general trend. it does have a very good ending, but i didn't love the whole as much as some books with imperfect endings.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is minor Lethem. In form, it is what John Gardner called jazzing around--"one of the best things narrative can do." Unfortunately, this novella just doesn't provide the sheer pleasure and wonder that Italo Calvino or Lewis Carroll give us when they're "jazzing." Here Lethem's cleverness is overt as always, but maybe too showy and kinda hollow.

[Noah Soudrette · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent, bizarre Kafka-esque novella about an old soldier and a friend of his son's, journeying through, what seems to be some kind of giant body they all live in. Very bizarre stuff, and it definitely has a compelling mystery, with a mostly satisfying conclusion. Worth a read if you like Lethem, or if you just like weird.

[Neal Kerrigan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A novellette. It creates a demented aura like Poe. It also starts up disjointed but builds. You don't quite see the whole idea until the very end, and when you the book is over but the story continues to build in your mind. You think what happened before, the mindset of the people, and what will happen When the time comes. It has the aura of Poe.

[David Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd wondered what this was after seeing the title in his "Books by..." list. What this is is a lark, a 55-page snack involving a handful of human-like characters who exist in "a shape" that is apparently a living mammal of some sort and who navigate among the organs. Inessential, but weird and silly.

[Hope · Rating 2 out of 5]

Um, I'm not sure what on earth this novella was about... I usually like the way Lethem plunges his readers head first into his worlds and pulls them along until they get the hang of it, but with only 55 pages, there's not really time to get a feel for the story before it's over -- in a confusing conclusion. Fantasy? Allegory? Truncated novel? Not sure what Lethem's getting at here...

[Leonard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 55-page "novel" (or novella) is humorous, fast-paced, and a good book to read to find out how Lethem writes, if you're not quite sure you want to tackle one of his longer novels, although I do recommend "Motherless Brooklyn."

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't think of a reason NOT to read this book. It's short, hilarious, deeply thought-provoking, and remarkably well-shaped. It makes me jealous. I would very much like to be able to write something along the lines of this.

[Martin Fossum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful experimental short work. John Ashbury meets the novella. This is the kind of thing that psychologist should love. Strong associations, rhyme, and pop references. The muddle of a searching psyche...

[steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

My friend Ben gave this to me to read. He says it's really a poem. I don't know what he means, but it's definitly better (and longer) than your average short story.