In Jonathan Lethem’s new novel, the genre-bending bard of pre-gentrified Brooklyn boards the subway to Queens (figuratively, that is, since he’s actually flown the coop entirely to Pomona, California). A family saga about the red-diaper generation, Dissident Gardens (Doubleday, September 10) is loosely based on the world of Lethem’s prickly leftist grandmother, Minna Frank, who appears in these pages as an excommunicated Communist named Rose Zimmer living in Sunnyside Gardens—a small brick-rowhouse community, built in the mid-to-late twenties, where “the old Communists went to die,” he jokes. Here, Lethem takes us on a walking tour of the Queens of his novel—and his memory.
Illustration by Peter Arkle