The narrator of Ben Lerner’s new novel has travelled to Providence, 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. But after the narrator drops his smartphone in the hotel sink, he arrives at Thomas’s 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 each other, that store or obliterate the memories that make us who we are.
‘Lerner is a linguistic magician and here is another triumphant and beautiful sleight of hand’ – Daisy Johnson
‘Transcription is another masterful intervention from a writer of unparalleled exactitude and intelligence. Lerner’s linguistic precision, stylistic brilliance and philosophical range are not only thrilling things to encounter on the page, they are gentle surgical tools for a tender existential operation upon the reader. They crack open a profound reckoning with how we are living now, and the effect is genuinely startling. We call this fiction, but it is much, much more’ – Max Porter
