Five Windows by Jon Roemer
With shades of Hitchcock's Rear Window, a homebound man becomes increasingly consumed by what he thinks he sees at a four-stop intersection in his San Francisco neighborhood.
At a busy intersection on a crammed city hillside, an overworked book editor looks up long enough to watch a trio of houses go up in flames. Once the smoke clears, he becomes increasingly concerned by what he sees out his windows and starts asking questions he never bothered with before: Is the encampment in the park responsible for the fires—or are his new upscale neighbors somehow to blame? Has the man upstairs even bothered to notice, or is his time better spent battling with his boyfriend? What's his own ex-wife doing, resurfacing now just when things are getting tense? Is everyone safer with more fire trucks around? And, just a block down the hill, is the new mixed-use project the perfect urban remedy, or will it do even more damage?
By the time the duplex across the street catches fire, he has to face a few questions about himself, too, including his own role in the neighborhood's upheaval. Inspired by Rear Window and set in San Francisco, Jon Roemer's debut novel explores a fabled American city divided by rapid and aggressive change.
Publication Date: September 24, 2019
Paperback: 182 pages
ISBN: 978-1-945814-94-5
Also available as an eBook
PRAISE FOR FIVE WINDOWS
"Like Hitchcock, Roemer excels at establishing and then deepening the reader/viewer's unease...Roemer's achievement here is to discomfit the reader without sacrificing the story's fundamental realism. This book reads, often, like a dystopian novel, but—disturbingly—it's one set in a dystopia we already live in.A frightening fable about the watcher and the watched." —Kirkus Reviews
"A one-person play that seems Shakespearean in scope, and Hitchcockian in suspense ... Five Windows is a Russian Doll of confounding contradictions: still but energetic, deadpan but tragic, obscure but utterly engaging. There is really nothing like it." —Statorec
"Jon Roemer writes beautifully, squeezing detail and meaning into finely wrought sentences, working best with the difficult zone of what’s not on the page. If you’re an experienced reader who desires brief, thinky books with small dashes of absurdism, Five Windows is the one for you. ... A bright little gem from a promising, thoughtful writer." —Book and Film Globe
"Suffused with unease, Five Windows casts its sharpest light on alienation and its spoils. The book’s quiet strength comes from the details of a city shifting beneath the feet of its inhabitants—and the irreparable fissures this creates." —Alta
"Like spying on your neighbor, Five Windows offers a unique look into the life of the man you see pacing back and forth in front of his window. ... Roemer’s book is one part humor, one part ambiguous, and all parts existential. ...Great for someone who enjoys a strong literary voice." —Independent Book Review
"At once terse and elliptical, confidant and doubtful, the Hitchcockian narrator of Five Windows lives in the San Francisco where history clashes with the contemporary, tech-rich neighbors step over the homeless living in tent villages, and where divorces are buy-outs and you can sue your neighbor for blocking your view. Like the slippery narratives and realities of Kazuo Ishiguro, Jon Roemer’s psychological thriller reveals the loneliness of a crowded city in which everybody sees their neighbors all day long and haven’t a clue who those neighbors are. It’s a gripping whodunit with an antihero as lovable and detestable as Travis Bickle, Tyler Durden, and John Cheever’s Swimmer."
—Brian D. Bouldrey, author of The Boom Economy
"Jon Roemer channels Hitchcock in this noirish stunner. An indie publisher watches with increasing horror as his San Francisco neighborhood is rattled by small explosions, fires, domestic disputes, demolition, gunshots, broken windows—a sinister series of skin-prickling accidents coming ever closer to home. In Roemer's hands, the online ‘world of whispers’ and the outside timeline of strange occurrances merge into an uncanny approximation of our times." —Jane Ciabattari, author of Stealing the Fire
"Darkly funny and surreal, Five Windows is a timely, page-turning debut about alienation and breakdowns communal and individual." —Vanessa Hua, author of River of Stars
"Jon Roemer knows his way around a sentence. From the first line through the last, readers feel they’re in the hands of an accomplished craftsman. Roemer’s writing is nuanced, controlled, and full of surprises. Five Windows follows a reclusive editor, obsessed with his neighbors and the turmoil of San Francisco in the throes of gentrification, but trapped inside a fishbowl of his own design. Roemer writes with an intimacy that becomes almost claustrophobic as our protagonist flirts with madness and the plot spirals toward its apocalyptic climax. An impressive, engrossing debut from a bold new voice." —Alia Volz, author of Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana and the Stoning of San Francisco
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JON ROEMER is a writer and editor based in San Francisco. He is founder and senior editor of Outpost19, an award-winning book publisher. He is queer, a San Francisco resident since 1991 and an explorer of urban change. Roemer studied literature and fiction writing at Northwestern.
