Motherless Brooklyn
by Jonathan Lethem
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 4919)
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 it's corresponding coolness. Sometimes, I come out on top, and I stumble upon amazing authors befor...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in September, 2007
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 ...more
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Read in August, 2008
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 everywh...more
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 everywh...more
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Read in May, 2007
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. Di...more
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. Di...more
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Read in August, 2007
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 ...more
For me, two things keep this book from being a five-star review. The first is that ...more
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Finally read it. Far tamer than Lethem's other stuff (more mature perhaps), he refines his exploration of the classic detective novel with a Tourettic "hero," uh... protagonist, whose mystery solving adventure takes a backseat to his inner monologue on/of Tourette's. In that the Story has a clear beginning, middle, and end--a problem is solved even--it is a very structured journey through a time of change for Lionel, our guy. However, the persistence of his condition is not affected by...more
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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 ...more
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 ...more
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Read in August, 2008
recommended to Love by:
Malcah
Detective novel with a twist - the protagonist has Tourette's. It's more than a riff on a formulaic genre book, though - the very essence of this book is to turn a cliché so completely on its head that it is virtually unrecognizable. The narrator's verbal tics cause him to riff on various words, allowing the author to play with language in ways that are bizarre, masterful, inappropriate and often hilarious. It was incredibly fun to read for that reason alone, yet also had a compelling plot t...more
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I don't like this book as much as everyone else does. This is a point of insecurity for me. I also don't care for Haruki Murakami's work (but, okay okay, I haven't read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles--but when I do, and if I still don't like his work after that, can people stop discounting my opinion as uneducated/unfounded?)--and I feel alone on this too. I liked Fortress of Solitude better than Motherless Brooklyn, mostly for its ambition and strangeness, though the prose struck me as a DeLillo k...more
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25 comments
Read in February, 2008
The narrator of this book is Lionel Essrog, an orphan from St. Vincent's Home for boys, in, you guessed it- Brooklyn. Lionel has Tourette's syndrome, and being inside his head was pretty fascinating. I learned a thing or two about Tourette's, for sure.Basically, a novel about Lionel's search for the person who killed his boss, small time Brooklyn hoodlum, Frank Minna. I loved reading about the streets of Brooklyn, where Frank and his four "Minna men", all orphans from the home, lived ...more
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Read in January, 2007
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 ...more
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Read in October, 2007
recommends it for:
Mobster crime fans
This was a struggle for me. I was much more interested in the detective's actions, thought processes, tics etc of the Tourette's syndrome than I was of the actual plot of the story. My husband actually has Tourette's and we listened to portions of this together. It was really interesting to me to hear his comments about how true the author's dipictions of the nature of the syndrome is. So, from that perspective I thought it was great. There was one line in particular that stood out as parti...more
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Read in November, 2007
recommends it for:
Brooklynites and Brooklynites at heart
It starts out with a car chase in Greenpoint, which is home sweet home for me, e\and centers on the King of Smith Street. Lionel Essrog, the narrator, tells the story of the Minna Men through his Tourrette's suppressions and compulsions. The famous toothbrush paragraph is excellent, of course, and the overall narrative voice is great. The main strength of the book is the narrative voice and it's worth reading just to explore that. It's a good read, and was a surprisingly quick one for me. Save...more
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Read in March, 2008
maybe not five stars, but better than 4.5 stars so there you have it. where as his book of stories, men and cartoons, for me was very undeveloped, this novel is the exact opposite. just a good, good story. it is a detective story, but like the best of them: the big sleep, red harvest, china town, it is literary. it is about more than the mystery, it is i think about the disabled, fractured nature of the world and our lives in that world. how connected are we to the world and to each other?...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in June, 2008
Totally fascinating in almost every way. I loved the narrator, a private detective who is handicapped and also aided by his Tourette's Syndrome, which forces him to see the "wheels within wheels" around him, from which he manages to draw conclusions and make discoveries that those around him cannot.
The plot sticks to the hard-boiled detective story format, although it does so almost self-referentially and, at times, ironically. However, the plot is secondary, in my opinion, to th...more
The plot sticks to the hard-boiled detective story format, although it does so almost self-referentially and, at times, ironically. However, the plot is secondary, in my opinion, to th...more
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You have a good, solid, Law and Order type plot that's just tidy and well-done, and within it these characters and ideas have a lot of room to express themselves, which they all do in their own, totally believable, human ways. A lot of the other books he wrote try to do this, but some of them get stuck in the conceit of the novel and never get out - like in Girl in Landscape. Other times the people are real but it's despite the plot, or the plot is about them as ideas and not their individual ...more
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Read in March, 2008
Loved this as much for it's characterization of Tourette's Syndrome as anything else. The story was ancillary to the main character. Fascinating to me to hear the way Lethem's character (Lionel) interacts with his syndrome both separately from and as part of himself. The gumshoe component, though entertaining, isn't much more than a vehicle for an intimate case study of a condition most people misunderstand as a punchline. Most pop-culture references to the syndrome are jokes about coprolalia, o...more
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Read in August, 2008
After reading The Disappointment Artist and Fortress Of Solitude, I have to admit I was disappointed by what appears to be his most famous book. I feel (not being an expert) that he did a fair job at evoking the hard-boiled detective novel without too much cliche (although it is not exempt). I was happy that it was a touch too knowing to fall completely from the fiction category to full-blown genre fiction.
Unfortunately Motherless Brooklyn did not transcend the conceptual architecture set up...more
Unfortunately Motherless Brooklyn did not transcend the conceptual architecture set up...more
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Read in December, 2007
recommends it for:
Anybody looking for a fun read.
The premise: a group of orphans from Brooklyn is charmed by the endearlingly corrupt Frank Minna, but when business at Minna's undercover detective agency turns tragic, it's up to the Tourettic Lionel Essrog to dig up the truth.
At first, this book's reliance on Essrog's Tourette's as a sometimes-annoying plot device seemed tasteless. But Essrog, the narrator, charmed me and I was quickly won over.
"Motherless Brooklyn" is a reminder that sometimes a book is just a plot held tog...more
At first, this book's reliance on Essrog's Tourette's as a sometimes-annoying plot device seemed tasteless. But Essrog, the narrator, charmed me and I was quickly won over.
"Motherless Brooklyn" is a reminder that sometimes a book is just a plot held tog...more
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Read in July, 2008
recommended to Jochs13 by:
Cindy Wallrecommends it for: The Eggers McSweeny's Crowd, those looking for an unconventional detective story
There are a lot of things I liked about this book: When I first opened Motherless Brooklyn, I thought Lionel's outburts would be disruptive and interrupt to the flow of the story, but by the first chapter's conclusion I basically glossed right over them (like Gilbert and Danny), which I think is a credit to Lethem's power as a story-teller and wordsmith. As in Fortress of Solitude, Lethem writes beautiful, sometimes dazzling, passages. Still, the story and characters couldn't hold my attention...more
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