We love books here at the Editorial Department...even the ones we weren't personally involved with.  However, with dozens of newspapers, magazines and websites covering new releases, it can be difficult to keep track of what people are saying about books newly on shelves.  To try to resolve that dilemma, we offer our Tuesday Review Wrapup, using the last sentences of prominent book reviews as literary tea leaves to discern the trends guiding our industry.  This week, we're looking at Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City.

"In the end the reader simply doesn’t care: these creatures inhabit neither a real flesh-and-blood Manhattan nor a persuasive fictional realm, and they’re so clearly plasticky puppets moved hither and thither by Mr. Lethem’s random whims that it’s of no concern to us what happens to them in this lame and unsatisfying novel."  - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"When the book hits the 300-page mark (it runs at over 400), Lethem seems to realize his story needs a point. And so we get a hastily-cobbled together ending in which the reader is asked to believe that almost everything that has transpired thus far may not have happened. (Because audiences always love this.) At one point, Insteadman commands himself to “interrogate your solipsism.” If only Lethem had heeded his protagonist’s advice."  - Maureen Callahan, New York Post

"As emblems, the novel’s figures represent far more than they personify. This can work for a myth, though Lethem’s depiction of New York as grand allegory, besides pretentious, is rather a waste of its living vitality. But even at their best, myths and symbols do poorly across long distances, particularly since they make us perform the toting (unlike stories and characters, which tote us). At more than 400 pages “Chronic City’’ is incantation on overtime."  - Richard Eder, Boston Globe

"Chronic City is an improvement over his last book, You Don't Love Me Yet, a mediocre, self-indulgent rock novel. But it lacks the streamlined beauty of Girl in Landscape or the antic acrobatics of Motherless Brooklyn. The novel is a capacious form. As with turkeys, however, overstuffing is ill-advised."  - Ariel Gonzalez, Miami Herald

" The book's zonked philosophizing about the nature of reality wears a little thin, but Lethem's claustrophobic vision of a world where everything is connected and nothing is as it seems proves both funny and frightening."  - Rob Brunner, Entertainment Weekly