"Jonathan Lethem has created in The Arrest an allegorical tale full of isolation and rejuvenation fitting for 2020. . . . Lethem is comfortable in his prose, having fun with this novel. . . . In a testament to Lethem's skill as a writer, he hones the novel into an enjoyable vehicle running smoother than that nuclear-powered tunnel digger." -- Austin Chronicle
"The Arrest is a speculative wonder, a joyfully shaggy and unapologetic page-turner of a tale. It is that rare work that manages to be both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time, somehow evoking all sides of what happens after the end. Simultaneously a celebration and condemnation of human nature, it's a compelling read from one of his generation's finest writers." -- The Maine Edge
"There are all of the expected and welcome pleasures of reading Lethem: his intellect, dialogue and wry humor...as with so much of his work, [The Arrest] is inventive, entertaining and superbly written." -- New York Times Book Review
"As a writer gifted at playing with genre forms and riffing on popular culture, (Lethem) enjoys tweaking dystopian-novel conventions." -- USA Today
"An impeccably executed, moving, and wildly inventive tale of madness and narrative at the end of the world. Lethem is at the top of his game." -- Emily St. John Mandel, author of The Glass Hotel and Station Eleven
"Lethem cleverly builds on and subverts the tropes of postapocalyptic dystopias, mixes in a metafictional element, and expertly mines the nature of storytelling and its power to enchant. An inventive and intelligent speculative tale." -- Booklist
"The Arrest is a novel that defies description in the best possible way, which makes it quintessentially a work of Jonathan Lethem's at his most sublime. It's an organic tale of the apocalypse, a Hollywood parable, and a fable of survival and surrender. The prose crackles, the jokes land hard and fast, and the story's heart is sensationally large. Spectacularly imaginative but grounded in humanity and hope--The Arrest is a perfect novel for this moment and future ones." -- Ivy Pochoda
"Put down your phone and read The Arrest. It feels as though it was written a hundred years from where we are now, in a new human context, but retrospectively inevitable, by someone with a pen trying to imagine the moment that everything became different. Included in the price, Lethem, with wit and suspense, also gives us a Hollywood novel, a love story, and a teenage gizmo novel about a ride across the country in the coolest atomic car ever. If I say anymore I will say too much." -- Michael Tolkin
"Rarely has a novel approached the sheer pleasure of The Arrest. This is a dystopian novel in thrall to its own genre, full of knockabout comic book bravado, with regular knowing nods to literary and cinematic history. It is, in short, a blast." -- The Observer (London)
"[An] exuberantly clever and knowing post-apocalyptic dystopia. . . . [Lethem is] a writer of abundant literary gifts who applies them with unapologetic enthusiasm. . . . Extremely strange, twistily plotted, fizzingly written . . . and lingeringly mysterious." -- Telegraph (UK)
