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Motherless Brooklyn
by: Jonathan Lethem

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780375724831
ISBN: 0375724834
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 336
Publication Date: October 24, 2000
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: October 24, 2000
Sales Rank: 13694
Studio: Vintage

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
From America's most inventive novelist, Jonathan Lethem, comes this compelling and compulsive riff on the classic detective novel.

Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he sets them are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatally stabbed, one of Lionel's colleagues lands in jail, the other two vie for his position, and the victim's widow skips town. Lionel's world is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case while trying to keep the words straight in his head. Motherless Brooklyn is a brilliantly original homage to the classic detective novel by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation.

Amazon.com Review:
Pop quiz. Please complete the following sentence: 'There are days when I get up in the morning and stagger into the bathroom and begin running water and then I look up and I don't even recognize my own _.' If you answered face, then your name is obviously not Jonathan Lethem. Instead of taking the easy out, the genre-busting novelist concludes this by-the-numbers string of words with toothbrush in the mirror.

This brilliant sentence and a lot of other really excellent ones compose Lethem's engaging fifth novel, Motherless Brooklyn. Lionel Essrog, a detective suffering from Tourette's syndrome, spins the narrative as he tracks down the killer of his boss, Frank Minna. Minna enlisted Lionel and his friends when they were teenagers living at Saint Vincent's Home for Boys, ostensibly to perform odd jobs (we're talking very odd) and over the years trained them to become a team of investigators. The Minna men face their most daunting case when they find their mentor in a Dumpster bleeding from stab wounds delivered by an assailant whose identity he refuses to reveal--even while he's dying on the way to the hospital.

Detectives? Brooklyn? Is this the same Lethem who danced the postapocalypso in Amnesia Moon? Incredibly, yes, and rarely has such a departure been pulled off with this much aplomb. As in the 'toothbrush' passage above, Lethem sets himself up with the imposing task of making tired conventions new. Brooklyn accents? Fuggetaboutit. Lethem's dialogue is as light on its feet as a prize fighter. Lionel's Tourette's could have been an easy joke, but Lethem probes so convincingly into the disorder that you feel simultaneously rattled, sympathetic, and irritated by the guy. Sure, the story is a mystery, but Motherless Brooklyn could be about flower arranging, for all we care. What counts is Lionel's tic-ridden take on a world full of surprises, propelling this fiction forward at edgy, breakneck speed. --Ryan Boudinot

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Creative, Interesting Writing
This is the first work I have read by Lethem, and now plan to read more by this author. The main character--though there are many, well-developed and interesting personages who populate this mystery novel--is unique in my experience: he suffers from Tourette's Syndrome, a real-life affliction that causes uncontrollable tics, compulsive repetition, and verbal outbursts. Much of the novel reflects and is influenced by this important aspect of the protagonist, but he is not simply a freak; Lethem's deft hand renders for us someone who is able, in his twitching sort of way, to not only craft a life but to conduct dangerous detective work on behalf of a murdered friend and former employer.

The plot line is not an afterthought, either; multiple strands gradually achieve interwoven clarity, resulting in a satisfying--if somewhat bittersweet--resolution at the end. This is an entirely satisfying read on ... Read More

Rating:

- So Much Fun to Read!
This book had fabulous characters, a suspenseful, complicated plot, and wonderful writing. I often laughed aloud and read sections aloud to my husband. So imaginative, creative, and compelling. I'd give it another star if I could!

Rating:

- Wonderful and original
This is a great book and very original. It blends together originality, an insight into Tourette's syndrome and a detective novel without losing anything on the way.

Highly recommended.

Rating:

- The star of small time
In "Motherless Brooklyn", Lethem created a world of small time. Small time mobsters employ much smaller time Frank Minna who employs tiny time Minna Men, of whom Lionel Essrog is the star. His star status is not obvious to everyone. To most around him he officially is a freak, with outbursts of verbal gobbledygook and repetitive jerky motions which scare and befuddle people. Minna, his one real friend, has known him for a smart guy all along, but this is only revealed by the end of the book. And it is at the end of the book that Minna's wife sees Lionel the way Minna saw him and that Lionel ends up earning respectful treatment even from the mobsters.

The readers are in a much better position. We see Lionel as a star from the very first pages: we would much rather listen to him than to any other character in the book. His Tourette's tics are hilarious, and his irony, borne out of inability to suppress ... Read More

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