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Motherless Brooklyn

3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 16,467 ratings · 1,538 reviews

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 charismati...more

Paperback, 311 pages

Published October 24th 2000 by Vintage (first published January 1st 1999)

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Nov 24, 2012 Jason rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: for-kindle, wine-club, 2012, reviewed

I used to have a customer with Tourette’s. Back when I was a teenage supermarket teller, a million and a half years ago, she used to come through my line routinely. At the time, I didn’t reflect much on her condition other than that I assumed it must be tough for her occasionally, but how tough it really was I considered only in the vaguest sense, to the extent that I considered it at all. (Sorry, lady, but I was 17 and had a whole slew of 17 year-old thoughts to preoccupy myself with.) She seem...more I used to have a customer with Tourette’s. Back when I was a teenage supermarket teller, a million and a half years ago, she used to come through my line routinely. At the time, I didn’t reflect much on her condition other than that I assumed it must be tough for her occasionally, but how tough it really was I considered only in the vaguest sense, to the extent that I considered it at all. (Sorry, lady, but I was 17 and had a whole slew of 17 year-old thoughts to preoccupy myself with.) She seemed to handle it in stride, though, or least this was my impression of our brief bi-weekly interactions—I certainly don’t remember there being any social awkwardness. It probably helped, too, that she never made any apologies for her outbursts.

So it was interesting for me, with Motherless Brooklyn, to experience life through the first-person perspective of Lionel Essrog, a man with, not only Tourette’s, but also its oft-accompanying sidekick, obsessive-compulsive disorder. With the little foreknowledge I have of these syndromes, I’m not able to say whether the novel faithfully represents them, but I’d like to think it does. Aside from the neuropsychiatric issues, Essrog also has a fascinating character history. Inexplicably orphaned at a young age, he grows up in a tough Brooklyn neighborhood and is recruited by a low-level Italian mobster whose eventual murder serves as the basis for the book’s detective-story plot. Essrog’s physical and verbal tics—which are conspicuously present throughout the investigation—do not impede the reader’s enjoyment of the novel, as his internal dialogue remains unhindered by the disorder (other than expressing an oncoming urge to shout or tap or straighten or poke), all of which I believe is consistent with the way Tourette’s presents in its sufferers. What’s more, Essrog’s tics almost endear the reader to him. I felt a kinship with the misunderstood, relatively lonely man who is driven by a misguided sense of loyalty in the search for his mentor’s killer.

Being at its core a mystery/crime thriller, Motherless Brooklyn at times falls prey to some of the clichés of the genre, but Lethem succeeds in transcending this label by writing with, I don’t know, heart or something. Essorg’s world, touched as it is by inner-city dealings and by mob activity, is still somewhat insular and claustrophobic. It’s his relationship to the elements of this tiny world, however, that drive his motivations and make this book among the more interesting crime novels I’ve read in a while.(less)

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Aug 06, 2012 Nathan "N.R." Gaddis rated it 2 of 5 stars

Every few months a book gets past my quality control screening. I ought to stop beating myself up over that fact. Generally I am happy to outsource my opinions about books not yet read to smarter people; I must have lapsed this time out, tempted by the $0.3333 price tag for a recognized yet unknown author with a sexy name. I had a strong desire to drop this text at page 30, but my inexperience with positively negative reviews naively committed myself to reading the whole damn thing merely for th...more Every few months a book gets past my quality control screening. I ought to stop beating myself up over that fact. Generally I am happy to outsource my opinions about books not yet read to smarter people; I must have lapsed this time out, tempted by the $0.3333 price tag for a recognized yet unknown author with a sexy name. I had a strong desire to drop this text at page 30, but my inexperience with positively negative reviews naively committed myself to reading the whole damn thing merely for the sake of the authority which such completionism would grant this here review.

First-person novels are difficult to write well and even more difficult for me to enjoy--the claustrophobia and extreme constriction of the novelistic world, squeezed as it is through a pair of unknowing eyes, tends toward a poverty of possibility. Contemporary novels, should they be deemed literary--and there is no clear evidence that Motherless Brooklyn be intended as a non-genre novel--cannot employ a first-person narrator without taking into account the realism brought to bear during the modernist period of literature--the consciousness-realism of Woolf, Faulkner, Joyce, et al. What Lethem fails to do, and what causes this reader to choke, is to integrate the protagonist and the first-person narrator into a coherent unity. The narrator who says "I" appears in the text as something distinct from the character whose experiences are recorded by that "I"; this "I"'s position of enunciation is never accounted for--i.e., why is he telling us this? The protagonist has Tourette's Syndrome, but apparently the narrator does not. The echolalia is always faithfully recorded within the dialogue, the narrator frequently describes physical Tourettic tics, but nothing of Tourette's appears among the words of the narrator. Being as Tourette's has a linguistic form of appearance, one might desire that the novelist make something novelistic out of this clay, that some wild dance of language might appear, that something echoing "meaningfulness" might be intimated among the meaningless barking of the Tourettic compulsion. Instead, what we get is a meaningless and relentless reminder that the protagonist has Tourette's even if the novel would suggest that he may just as well not have had Tourette's. Lethem's tic is as meaningless as Essrog's.

Perhaps this meaninglessness is intentional; that Essrog's meaningless bursts of language are a microscopic echo of the macroscopic meaninglessness of the contemporary novel. Or some similar bullshit. Such-like I've not come across since being bored silly by American Psycho in the mid-90's. Lethem provides, perhaps, a tip of the hat towards saving his primary imagery by occasionally half-heartedly suggesting similes for Tourette's--paranoia, generalizations, insomnia--but such reminders that we are reading a novelist's creation only press home the dullness with which he works his material.

In other words, if you are fascinated by the spectacle of Tourette's Syndrome and think that a novelist might have an imaginative insight into the experience--"How does it feel?"--you will want to look elsewhere. Motherless Brooklyn is an opportunity wasted.

__________
An excellent response to my review and comments below, can be found in Friend Drew's review.
(less)

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Nathan "N.R." Gaddis Drew wrote: "I like this review although I don't really agree with it. My own review says some stuff about your main "quibble," Nathan, but I doubt it...more
04 nov. 04:38

Christopher Roberts I do not understand why the character having Tourette's would result in prose that contained tics. Someone with Tourette's would not have any problem...more
27 fév. 14:22

Apr 30, 2013 Gary McTiernan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Lionel Essrog is an unforgettable character. Like all fictional detectives he has one defining characteristic; something which sets him apart: Lionel has Tourette's Syndrome. This turns out to be an asset for him when he sets out to find his mentor's killer because everyone assumes he is stupid. What works for him as a detective unfortunately undermines his effectiveness as the protagonist and narrator. The virtuosity demonstrated by Lethem, as he joyfully strings syllables together for Lionel t...more

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Dec 26, 2012 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars

Motherless Brooklyn deserves a decent review from me, but...I am suffering from post-Christmas food coma/laziness and so it isn't going to happen.

1. As of today there are 1476 reviews of this book. If you read the ones on the first page of GR you will get a nice sample of the good, the bad and the ugly. I pretty much agree with the good ones.

2. Lionel is one of the best characters I've met in fiction. He is...complicated. He has Tourette's Syndrome and a whole constellation of other ticcish comp...more Motherless Brooklyn deserves a decent review from me, but...I am suffering from post-Christmas food coma/laziness and so it isn't going to happen.

1. As of today there are 1476 reviews of this book. If you read the ones on the first page of GR you will get a nice sample of the good, the bad and the ugly. I pretty much agree with the good ones.

2. Lionel is one of the best characters I've met in fiction. He is...complicated. He has Tourette's Syndrome and a whole constellation of other ticcish compulsions, but he is also clever, interesting, easily dismissed as a freak. In his own words: "think of a coloring-book image of the Green Hornet, say. That's who I was supposed to be, that black outline of a man in a coat, ready suspicious eyes above his collar, shoulders hunched, moving toward conflict.

Here's who I was instead: that same coloring-book outline of a man, but crayoned by the hand of a mad or carefree or retarded child, wild slashes of idiot color, a blizzard of marks violating the boundaries..."

3. If you love language, the play of words, their rhythms, their sounds, then this book is a feast. Lionel Essrog's verbal tics are poignant, silly, funny, often wildly inappropriate. They also roll around on my tongue and feel marvelous: "Dickweed! Dickyweed! Dicketywood!" I was trapped in a loop of self...that of refining a verbal tic to free myself from its grip..."Restrictaweed, detectorwood, vindictaphone." Sometimes these interjections add a warped kind of subtext to whatever Lionel is trying to say, sometimes they are random nonsense. Often he's hoping the bad guy he's talking to will mistake one for the other.

4. Lethem dragged me into the gritty, seedy underbelly of Brooklyn with its petty mobsters, rundown storefronts, delicious mix of great cheap food and random ethnic divides. He did this in a way that made me feel like I was right there in the middle of the city from the opening stakeout scene with Lionel elbows deep in a bagful of 6 White Castle sliders, to his walkup above L&L, to Frank Minna's mother cooking sautéed squid, stuffed peppers and tripe soup that she sold to regular customers from the door of her apartment. The descriptions are spare, not flowery or wordy, but amazingly effective for all that.

5. The genre detective story is very...generic. It works, nothing wrong with it, but it isn't going to make you sit up and take notice. Essentially it's a story of power play between various criminal elements, petty and otherwise. For me it added color and movement to what was the real story: Lionel's very late coming of age, his stepping out beyond the safe harbor of Frank Minna-as-father and the other Minna Men as brothers/family.

6. Wow. This is too long already, so I'll shut up.

Good book. I'd read it again, just to enjoy the language and Lionel. Recommended for those who like this kind of character study and don't need lots of story and twisty plot.(less)

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Jul 06, 2008 Alison rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: "crazies", "maniacs", "freaks" (i.e. everybody)

Motherless Brooklyn is a beautifully written novel about a complicated man named Lionel Essrog who is an orphan and a sufferer of Tourette's. As we all know about Tourette's, the syndrome causes you to spurt out words (sometimes profanity) during periods of stress in order to ease an internal undying mental angst. Lionel also suffers from OCD and the infinite need to count things...to mix words in his head and regurgitate them in order to sort through the chaos that is everday life for a hood in...more Motherless Brooklyn is a beautifully written novel about a complicated man named Lionel Essrog who is an orphan and a sufferer of Tourette's. As we all know about Tourette's, the syndrome causes you to spurt out words (sometimes profanity) during periods of stress in order to ease an internal undying mental angst. Lionel also suffers from OCD and the infinite need to count things...to mix words in his head and regurgitate them in order to sort through the chaos that is everday life for a hood in Brooklyn, New York.

Lionel is a Minna man, a supposed brainless strong-arm for a man named Frank Minna. When Minna is killed, this story becomes a classic detective novel, as Lionel takes it upon himelf to solve the case of his dead boss, mentor, and father-figure.

" I cut the sandwich into six equal pieces, taking unexpectedly deep pleasure in the texture of the kaiser roll's resistance to the knife's dull teeth, and arranged the pieces so they were equidistant on the plate. I returned the knife to my counter, then centered plate, candle, and drink on the table in a way that soothed my grieving Tourette's. If I didn't stem my syndrome's needs, I would never clear a space in which my own sorrow could dwell."

I love this book because it's set in NYC and romanticizes (in the way that makes your mouth water for a pepperoni-and-provolone hero with peppers inside) and villifies Brooklyn at the same time. The dialogue reminds me of an old Humphrey Bogart movie--The Big Sleep (the R. Chandler novel was quoted more than once in the book) or the Maltese Falcon, or even, the more contemporary movie (loathed by many, liked by me) "Brick." It was similar to "The Curious Incident..." in that it was a mystery told from the perspective of a mentally handicapped protagonist--and by walking in his shoes we learn more about what it would be like to suffer from the syndrome ourselves.

The character of Essrog was also a bit reminiscent of Nic Cage in the movie "Matchstick Men" but much more loveable and complex. This novel was BORN to be a fantastic movie (as now being filmed by/with Ed Norton? (thanks Beth). Can't wait to see it. It would also make a great series of novels.

(less)

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Jun 20, 2012 Angus rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nbcc-award, reviewed-and-blogged, 5-stars

Original post at Book Rhapsody.

***

A De-tec-tic Tale

I am not a fan of detective novels. I am not a fan of a lot of things, if you have noticed through the constant reading of what I write. But I did like watching that Japanese cartoon detective series aired a few years ago on local TV. Detective Conan, yes, that mysteriously shrunken cute boy genius who could solve any crime presented to him thanks to the innumerable convolutions of his brains.

And do detective stories always feature a super intel...more

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Dec 15, 2009 Jason rated it 2 of 5 stars

Way too gimmicky! About Motherless Brooklyn Newsday calls Jonathan Lethem "one of the most original voices among younger American novelists;" while Entertainment Weekly describes him as "one of our most inventive, stylish and sensous writers." I strongly disagree. I think these organiztions have confused originality with gimmickry.

Goodreads interviewed Jonathan Lethem in their November newsletter. I'd never heard of him. I checked out a couple of his books at the library, one for me, one for my...more

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Feb 19, 2008 Keith rated it 3 of 5 stars

Remember in 1999, when DVD players were just becoming affordable and snot noses in college were getting them for their dorm rooms? They invited you over to watch and the only DVD they had was The Matrix. Why? Don't know. It was just the first choice everyone made. But, it sure did look cool.

Motherless Brooklyn is the book version of that for any newbie moving into Brooklyn (or quasi-Brooklyn like myself). Either the title compelled them to buy it ("I live in Brooklyn, this MUST be for me") or t...more

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May 21, 2007 dave eck rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a book that Slavoj Zizek, in my little imagined world, wishes he had written, wishes each time he rereads it in obsessive delight. Motherless Brooklyn entails the little imagined world of Lionel Essrog, a tourettic orphan become tourettic detective. Essrog isn't your classic hero, nor is he a pitiful anti-hero.

As a first-person narrative, Motherless Brooklyn throws its story at you as you walk into the story with Essrog's mouth full of a greasy White Castle burger. Dietary as well as po...more

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Feb 02, 2010 Michelle rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

Oh, Jonathan Lethem. I could see how that plot was going to unfold from a mile away. Do you think I missed my calling as a police detective? I think I've just seen too many episodes of Law & Order (et. al.) in my day. I was fond of Lionel, though.

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Feb 13, 2009 Chloe rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: mystery-thriller, fiction, not-owned

I have been on a bit of a mystery bender lately and I'm not quite sure what to make of that. Perhaps it's the return to the overcast North-West that sends me wanting to plumb the depths of human behavior. The gray skies and early sunsets bring out a curiosity about people's inner darkness which is always matched, measure for measure, by the capacity for redemption. Toughs with no visible qualities reveal a fierce dedication to recently killed compatriots. Prima facie immorality is revealed to be...more I have been on a bit of a mystery bender lately and I'm not quite sure what to make of that. Perhaps it's the return to the overcast North-West that sends me wanting to plumb the depths of human behavior. The gray skies and early sunsets bring out a curiosity about people's inner darkness which is always matched, measure for measure, by the capacity for redemption. Toughs with no visible qualities reveal a fierce dedication to recently killed compatriots. Prima facie immorality is revealed to be a cover for a rigid adherence to a moral code, something that seems necessary while swimming through the murky waters of crime and violence. Something within that pleases me to no end.

Which makes reading a Jonathan Lethem mystery even more satisfying. Few authors are as capable of writing with such exquisite skill as Lethem. It doesn't matter whether he's writing elegies to Philip K. Dick's lost genius or interviewing Bob Dylan, every word the man writes is one that I find myself increasingly compelled to read as though I, too, suffered from the OCD compulsions that drive Motherless Brooklyn's hero, Lionel Essrog. Lionel suffers from Tourette's Syndrome, a malady that, in the hands of a lesser writer, would quickly devolve into an extended stereotype and free-form fecal farce.

Yet with Lethem we get to peer inside Lionel's head as he tries to ride herd on his tics, struggling to avoid the triggers that will send him on a long and winding rant, all so that he can discover the identity of his mentor's killer. Along the way we are treated to a classic Lethem take on music and how Prince is the musical equivalent of Tourette's. I am, to be honest, quite taken with Lionel in a way that I haven't been since meeting Oskar in Jonathan Safron Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Though more than a couple decades separate these two characters they are, at the least, spiritual kin. Both meander the unfamiliar streets of Manhattan searching for clues to a father figure now gone, and you want to let both of them into your apartment for hot cocoa.

That is not to say that Motherless Brooklyn is all mental illness and sunshine. No, there is a classic story of murder, greed and ambition that swirls within the larger themes of faltering old crime families and the unspoken apartheid that builds walls across blocks of this New York borough. In short, this is Lethem at the top of his game and a book that is not to be missed.(less)

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Sep 13, 2007 Myleen Hollero rated it 5 of 5 stars

"eat shit, dickyweed"

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Nov 05, 2012 Booknblues rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: mystery readers

Shelves: mystery, nyc

Surrounded by a sea of words, Lionel Essrog is a prisoner of the obsessiveness that binds those with Tourette's Syndrome. Jonathan Lethem introduces us to one of the most interesting characters I have come across in some time in his novel Motherless Brooklyn.
As an orphan in Brooklyn, Lionel has no idea what causes his own strange behavior until Frank Minna, a local mobster takes Lionel and some of his buddies from the orphanage under his wing. Minna frees Lionel, by not only giving him some purp...more

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Aug 06, 2009 Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary, gr-friend-recommendations

Tell me to do it muffin ass …. to rest the lust of a loaftomb! …. Barnamum Pierogi lug!

Meet Lionel Essrog. Viable Guessfrog, Lionel Deathclam, Liable Guesscog, Ironic Pissclam. Lionel is a Minna Man. A full fledged Hardly Boy… A freakshow… A member of Motherless Brooklyn.

I love Lionel. Not in my special groupie way. Hold your hats here; I might be growing as a person. Nah. I just really love Lionel’s brain. Peirogi kumquat sushiphone! Domestic marshmallow ghost! Insatiable Mallomar!

Did I men...more

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Aug 07, 2008 Becca rated it 3 of 5 stars

Though it was decent enough, knowing Lethem's other work made me still think that this book was a let down. The book is filled with brilliant writing, brilliant language, brilliant images- and it's worth the read for that alone.
The premise is awesome, but Lethem doesn't follow it through to it's full potential. It is written from the perspective of a detective with Tourettes, but the language of the first person narrative itself isn't at all Tourettic despite the speech of the narrator everywher...more

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Mar 28, 2013 Zerbe rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've got this bad habit. Sometimes, in half a frenzy, not even knowing what I'm doing, I find myself on the way out of a bookstore with a bag of books that I've just bought for no other reason than the fact that I felt like I needed a book. I am not at my most discerning in these shopping sprees, judging books not only by their covers, but by their font, their publisher and their author's name and its corresponding coolness. Sometimes, I come out on top, and I stumble upon amazing authors before...more I've got this bad habit. Sometimes, in half a frenzy, not even knowing what I'm doing, I find myself on the way out of a bookstore with a bag of books that I've just bought for no other reason than the fact that I felt like I needed a book. I am not at my most discerning in these shopping sprees, judging books not only by their covers, but by their font, their publisher and their author's name and its corresponding coolness. Sometimes, I come out on top, and I stumble upon amazing authors before anyone has heard of them, like when I bought Max Barry's first novel, Syrup. Other times, I'm even luckier, finding authors who, despite their talent, will never see their names on the New York Times Bestsellers List (British satirist Gordon Houghton unfortunately belongs to this camp, with his novel Damned If You Do--which, by the way, Christopher Moore totally fucking ripped off for his A Dirty Job). But other times. Oh, other times. The dangers of buying books willy-nilly is that sometimes you come up with a fistful of shit. Adam Johnson's Parasites Like Us was a Frenzy Buy, and look how that turned out.

But it seems as though the fates are shining upon me this time around, with Jonathan Lethem's 1999 release, Motherless Brooklyn. Of course, buying a Lethem book (as I've already insinuated) is not so willy-nilly as my spotted purchasing past has demonstrated. Obviously, the acclaimed author of The Fortress of Solitude's accomplishments precede him. Hell, even Motherless Brooklyn's got a National Book Critics Circle Award For Fiction logo right there on its cover. However, it was the first Lethem book I ever picked up, and I picked it up solely because I realized that I had yet to pick up a Lethem book. I knew nothing about him, other than the fact that my roommate liked him, and that he was on The Simpsons once. But, that's the kind of mentality one should have when going to the library, not throwing open a wallet at a bookstore. Fortunately, this time luck was on my side.

Motherless Brooklyn is a detective story of sorts, an interesting blend of Silver Age shoot-em-ups and Golden Age intellectual-case-cracking. But at its core, it is a study on its main character, Lionel Essrog. A young man with Tourette's Syndrome, thrown into a world of confusion when his boss Frank Minna dies, Lionel provides a narrating light into a grimy nightmare of mobsters, femme fatales and Japanese hitmen. The Tourettic compulsions Lionel has to fend off during the course of the novel could be a story unto themselves, let alone teamed with the edge-of-the-seat detective thriller that drives the novel forward. I was worried at first that these compulsions might weigh the story down, but really they made Lionel all the more believable, which is important in a detective story since the mystery itself is hardly ever able to be solved by the reader (in the true spirit of Sherlock Holmes and Scooby-Doo, the plot is way too complicated and far-reaching for a reader to have a chance here).

But that's not to say the plot is bad. It's one of the most original and well-executed detective novel plots that I've read in awhile. But, as with any good mystery, the novel should be more about the detective than his detection. Developing a character we care about and want to see make it through to the other side, bloodied and battered but still breathing and with the bad guys in cuffs. Like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle a hundred years before, Lethem succeeds handily in creating a detective worth reading about.

Score one for Frenzy Mode. Lethem is a treat. Perhaps I'll pick up The Fortress of Solitude next time I lose myself in the Fiction aisle.(less)

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Jan 30, 2008 Dan rated it 4 of 5 stars

I like Lionel Essrog more as time goes by, and I find my morning bus commute past the super-old-school Italian social club on 3rd Ave every morning oddly evocative. Lethem knows how to make a place in his fiction, and let his characters really live there. This is really an excellent novel, especially if you live in Brooklyn. And if you don't, and you have an open heart, it will want to make you move here.

For me, two things keep this book from being a five-star review. The first is that the book...more

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Jun 11, 2010 Jana rated it 3 of 5 stars

Do you remember that romantic Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd detective series Moonlighting from the end of the 80s? I used to love it so much, but not until years later, when I seriously started listening to jazz, did I remember that catchy jazzy tune. Motherless Brooklyn was like that a little bit. Maybe I am doing sideways with this introduction, because there is not an actual plot proof in which this book is connected neither with jazz nor with romance nor with the 80s, but it's purely base...more

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Dec 15, 2007 Daniel Rose rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Brooklynites, I guess.

A well written, quirky detective novel. I gave this book longer than I give most books to convince me it was worth reading. It's hard for me to enjoy a novel if I don't identify with the protagonist... or at least find them extremely charming. Lionel Essrog, the story's unlikely hero, is neither particularly likable nor particularly unlikable. I didn't get sucked in until I was almost a third of the way through, was very engaged for about 150 pages and then chugged through the final 50 only to s...more

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Jun 08, 2012 Maxime rated it 5 of 5 stars

I love everything about this book. Jonathan Lethem's distinct writing and insightful analogies make reading this book a feast for your literary imagination yet all the while the story stays grounded and real. As you follow Lionel Essrog's struggle to bridle his tourettes syndrome in the midst of his amateur detective work, you will start to feel as though you have contracted his tourettes. When you manage to make it through several pages without an outburst you feel the pressure of his urge in y...more

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Dec 28, 2008 patience rated it 4 of 5 stars

A hard-boiled detective novel with a detective who has Tourette's syndrome. Sounds gimmicky but really fascinating and well-done.

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Jun 16, 2007 Lee rated it 3 of 5 stars

I loved this book for the first 3/4. The writing is terrific and the main character, Lionel, (a private detective with Tourette's Syndrome) is completely arresting. Through this main character, Lethem does wonderful things with language. This book made me love words all over again. However, this is a mystery novel, and the "mystery" wears thin after a while. I found myself wanting to get to the end, not to see how the plot would play out, but to see how Lionel would handle it. I lost interest in...more

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Aug 16, 2007 Laurie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I might have a affinity with the main character of this book that goes beyond the typical, and so that might be why this novel delighted me so much. Probably if you are someone who has said to me recently that my lifelong obsessive-compulsive mimic behavior is delightful and that my parents were heinous for trying to shame me out of down my god-given talent for recreating accents, bells, jangly phrasing, and rev-rev-revving motor sounds, you will love this book. Also, if you like words like "gob...more

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Jun 16, 2013 Jason rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2013

What makes this novel stick out is not its ostensible twist: a detective novel in which the main character has tourettes. Okay, that's interesting. It's also interesting that the characters in the novel are low level mobsters who have been very successfully kept out of the loop in a way that astounds in it's flawed beauty, being the perfect loyal lapdogs. What makes it intersting is its relentless focus on language, in the way it spills from the protagonist, in the way in which it must define, b...more

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May 02, 2013 Bill rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary, mystery

An Amateur Detective with Tourette's

Lethem, Jonathan (1999). Motherless Brooklyn. New York: Random/Doubleday.

Four teenage boys living in an orphanage in 1979 Brooklyn. They are hired out for odd jobs of questionable legality by Frank Minna, a local small-time thug and mobster wannabe. The first person narrative is given by one of the boys, Lionel Essrog, a fifteen year-old who has Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological disorder characterized by outbursts of verbal free-associations and rhymes.

Earl...more An Amateur Detective with Tourette's

Lethem, Jonathan (1999). Motherless Brooklyn. New York: Random/Doubleday.

Four teenage boys living in an orphanage in 1979 Brooklyn. They are hired out for odd jobs of questionable legality by Frank Minna, a local small-time thug and mobster wannabe. The first person narrative is given by one of the boys, Lionel Essrog, a fifteen year-old who has Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological disorder characterized by outbursts of verbal free-associations and rhymes.

Early on, Frank is killed and the rest of the book is Lionel’s story of searching for Frank’s murderer. So it is is nominally an amateur detective tale, but the novel is better read as an original character study and as a virtuosic display of writing talent. For example:

“Want one?” he said, holding out the bag. His voice was a dull thing where it began in his throat but it resonated to grandeur in the tremendous instrument of his torso, like a mediocre singer on the stage of a superb concert hall.
“No, thanks,” I said…
“So what’s the matter with you?” he said, discarding another of the withered kumquats.
“I’ve got Tourette’s,” I said.
“Yeah, well, threats don’t work with me.”
“Tourette’s,” I said…
He shoved me again, straight-armed my shoulder, and when I tried, ticcishly to shove his shoulder in return I found I was held at too great a distance…and it conjured some old memory of Sylvester the Cat in a boxing ring with a kangaroo. My brain whispered, He’s just a big mouse, Daddy, a vigorous louse, big as a house, a couch, a man, a plan, a canal, apocalypse.
“Apocamous,” I mumbled, language spilling out of me unrestrained. “Unplan-a-canal. Unpluggaphone.” (pp. 203-205).

Lionel’s verbal tics are creative and often funny, not just word salad, but designed by Lethem with poetic rhythm and sonority. This keeps the recurring gag from getting stale as the novel wears on. Also, as the example shows. Lethem gives us access to Lionel’s thought processes so when we hear his verbal outbursts, we understand, as other characters in the story cannot, what meanings the outbursts might have. That gives the scene inside jokes.

Still, after the first half of the book, the Tourette’s gimmick began to wear pretty thin for me. However, the quality of the writing remained very high, excellent narrative descriptions, snappy dialog, and interesting, quirky characters and settings. So even though the book is not entirely successful as a detective story, and not consistently funny as a humorous tale, the writing is very good.(less)

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Jan 30, 2013 Luke Dani rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: funny, literary-excellence, genre-riffing

Lionel Essrog, the "free human freakshow" with his poetic tics, involuntarily word creativity and distracted vulnerability, is the most compelling character I've hung out with in ages. Lethem, who's somewhat of an expert at portraying quirky men out of touch with their emotions but not their imaginations, is at his best here, expressing subtle changes in Lionel and his fellow orphans-turned-"Minna Men" through perfectly restrained (and yet flamboyant) dialogue, the rising pitch of Lionel's tics...more

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Jan 23, 2013 Jas rated it 5 of 5 stars

like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.... except:

1. It's about an adult with tourettes syndrome

2. the prose and writing and dialog is more complex, and thus evokes a visceral response

3. the DX is explained and explored in a few ways that drifts away from TCIOTDITNT.

3a: its part of the narrative, to the extend that I developed sort of this, relationship... connection to the main character

3b: it highlights the social emotional struggles for both the main character as well as tho...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Will Tate rated it 5 of 5 stars

The best book I've read since...well, since reading Lethem's "Gun with Occasional Music" in the spring. Both were recommended on a website devoted to the Postmodern Mystery, and I am determined to work my way through the rest of the books on the list, though I doubt there'll be many to match this one. Whereas "Gun..." brought elements of surrealist fantasy into the classic structure of a detective novel, "Motherless Brooklyn" is, ostensibly at least, much more of a straightforward example of the...more The best book I've read since...well, since reading Lethem's "Gun with Occasional Music" in the spring. Both were recommended on a website devoted to the Postmodern Mystery, and I am determined to work my way through the rest of the books on the list, though I doubt there'll be many to match this one. Whereas "Gun..." brought elements of surrealist fantasy into the classic structure of a detective novel, "Motherless Brooklyn" is, ostensibly at least, much more of a straightforward example of the crime genre, a neo-noir paying direct homage to the likes of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, but located in the gritty, realistic setting of modern Brooklyn. The detective-narrator is Lionel Essrog, a Tourettes sufferer, who, together with 3 fellow orphans from the St. Vincents Home for Boys, has been drafted into working for small-time mobster Frank Minna. But Minna gets in too deep with the wrong type of people and is fatally stabbed, and his widow skips town, and it is left to Lionel to unravel the threads of the case, as he tries to unravel the thought processes that would enable him to have a normal conversation. As Lionel's investigations take in a hitman working for a zen Buddhist foundation, Japanese gangsters and a car chase to the Maine coast (he's never been out of N.Y. before) the novel reads like a classic hard-boiled detective yarn, but it is so much more; as Lionel discovers the past about frank Minna it calls into doubt all he ever knew about him and rivalries develop amongst the "Minna Boys" left behind, motherless and now, in effect, fatherless. And Lionel's struggles to overcome his Tourettes becomes an exploration of thought processes, leading me to wonder if we are not all, to some extent, sufferers of the condition, with its tics and rituals. The struggles of Lionel could have been played just for laughs, and there are plenty of moments of dark humour, notably when he suffers an outburst to disrupt the meditative calm of the Buddhists' meeting, but the biggest laugh-out-loud moment for me was the joke about a man going into a bar with an octopus, which Lionel tells to the dying Frank on his way to hospital. It's that sort of book.
(less)

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Nov 09, 2012 Tyler Jones rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: hard-boiled-wonderland, books-that-changed-my-life

Another book review that is really a piece of autobiography disguised as a book review. Don't you hate these?

This book came into my life at the perfect moment. I had just quit my job as a member of the management team of a big box bookstore. I had started out selling books a decade earlier and had held down a few jobs at small bookstores as well as a brief stint as a publisher's sales rep. But this was in the 'nineties, when independent bookstores first started feeling the crunch of wholesalers...more Another book review that is really a piece of autobiography disguised as a book review. Don't you hate these?

This book came into my life at the perfect moment. I had just quit my job as a member of the management team of a big box bookstore. I had started out selling books a decade earlier and had held down a few jobs at small bookstores as well as a brief stint as a publisher's sales rep. But this was in the 'nineties, when independent bookstores first started feeling the crunch of wholesalers and big box retailers taking away a big chunk of their business. In '96 I still wanted to sell books but the only place hiring was a big box. I took the job gladly - I'd sell books for the devil if he gave me a staff discount- and after a year was made a manager. But three years was all I could take. I won't bore you with details, but the experience had little to do with books and everything to do with working for profit grubbing vampires. So I quit. In 1999 I thought my whole life in the book business was over - and good riddance.

My wife worked in one of the two independent books stores left in the city. I knew they would hire me but I just felt I needed to do something else. But what? I got a construction job and quit after two days, barely making enough to pay for the steel-toed boots they made me buy. Then I got a job in a warehouse - the starting wage was more than I had ever made selling books. The job sucked but the money was alright - which I guess is how most people feel about whatever they have to do to pay the bills, right?

I never stopped reading, of course, and when Motherless Brooklyn came out I devoured it in the long hours I had to spend in the gatehouse waiting for trucks to let in and out of the yard. This book brought back the joy of reading for me, so much so that I knew that I had to surround myself with other people for whom books were central to their lives. (Well, this book and "The Name of the World" by Denis Johnson)

I got a job at the independent bookstore with my wife. My pay dropped by about two-thirds but I was much, much happier and I've worked with books ever since.

What is Motherless Brooklyn about? I can't remember. A small time gangster with Tourette syndrome trying to solve the murder of his boss. It was really good.

You should read it.(less)

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Aug 04, 2012 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Motherless Brooklyn is a detective story with an interesting detective and a not so interesting story. There is something very endearing about Lionel Essrog, the story’s main character. Lionel, or Freakshow, as his friends call him, is an orphan and he suffers from Tourrette’s Syndrome. Jonathan Lethem does a remarkably credible job of explicating the running inner dialog, the tics and touches and the frustratingly uncontrollable exclamations that constantly ruin Lionel’s ability to blend in wit...more

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About Jonathan Lethem

JONATHAN LETHEM is the author of seven novels. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Lethem has published his stories and essays in The New Yorker, Harpers, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and the New York Times, among others.

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Quotes from Motherless Brooklyn

“Insomnia is a variant of Tourette's--the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has turned away, touching it everywhere, refusing to settle, to join the collective nod. The insomniac brain is a sort of conspiracy theorist as well, believing too much in its own paranoiac importance--as though if it were to blink, then doze, the world might be overrun by some encroaching calamity, which its obsessive musings are somehow fending off.” — 111 people liked it

“Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.” — 11 people liked it

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