Topeka School (Lerner) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Lerner’s own arsenal has always included a composer’s feel for orchestration [and] a ventriloquist’s vocal range .… I could say more—about trauma, sex, paradox, magic—but only at the cost of further reducing this irreducible novel, which seeks instead to spread its readers beyond their borders with its fertile intelligence and its even more abundant heart.
Garth Risk Hallberg - New York Times Book Review


[Lerner is] one of the most acclaimed writers in the English-speaking world…. [The Topeka School] is not just a bildungsroman… but a polyphonic portrait of an entire community…. Lerner can get away with writing so many books that are autofictional because a spirit speaks through him—because his language takes on a life of its own.
Becca Rothfeld - Wall Street Journal


An extraordinarily brilliant novel that’s also accessible to anyone yearning for illumination in our disputatious era…. Through the wizardry of Lerner’s prose, this battle of adolescent elocution becomes an emblem for the fiery state of American culture…. Among the myriad miracles of The Topeka School is that it accomplishes so much, captures so much and questions so much about America in fewer than 300 pages.
Ron Charles - Washington Post


Lerner is a dazzlingly intelligent writer, and for anyone looking to understand contemporary America this tale of toxic masculinity, resentful outcasts, rigged high-school debates and political disaster is a good place to start.
Times (UK)


A triumph of ventriloquism…. [Lerner] has written a perfectly weighted, hugely intelligent, entirely entertaining novel that does more than simply mine his childhood or explore what it is to be an author; he has taken on American masculinity, group identity and marginalization, political messaging and generational exchange, and has done so not didactically but generously and with admirable sensitivity."
Times Literary Supplement (UK)


[The Topeka School] is thoroughly, intimidatingly brilliant and absolutely contemporary…. It's funny, and at times, painfully acute…. [Lerner] is a supremely gifted prose stylist, at once theoretical and conversational; he never bores or blathers, and is always limpid. Rather than inviting the reader to look at him or his life, he invites the reader to look through him.
Christine Smallwood - Harper's


Autofiction master Lerner returns with his most expansive novel to date.… Narration from the present-day and interludes hinting at a terrible tragedy add intrigue to this study of polarization and toxic masculinity.
Entertainment Weekly


Loosely plotted but riveting, this novel expertly locates the thread of the anxious present in the memory-stippled past.
Publishers Weekly


[T]his book reintroduces Adam Gordon, narrator of Lerner's…  Leaving the Atocha Station. Adam's youth in Topeka, KS, is unveiled,… Readers seeking the wry humor… will find it in short supply here. This exploration of the angst-filled road to manhood is recommended for fans of Jonathan Franzen.  —Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL
Library Journal


(Starred review) Engrossing…. Few writers are so deeply engaged as Lerner in how our interior selves are shaped by memory and consequence…. Autofiction at its smartest and most effective: self-interested, self-interrogating, but never self-involved.
Kirkus Reviews