Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Motherless Brooklyn
Book Review: "It's a Tourette's thing--you wouldn't understand."
Summary: 5 Stars
Yet, Jonathan Lethem makes us understand. This is a brilliant work, filled with completely fleshed out characters, a crazy, creative plot, and a murder mystery wrapped in a sense of the absurd. Lionel Essrog is the central character with Tourette's syndrome, and I cannot say enough superlatives about his characterization and dialogue. I found myself thinking about Lionel long after I finished the book; the tics, the words, the creativity, I can't say enough good things about this work. What a great book that balances prose, plot, characters, and originality. This book is unforgettable.Book Review: "Monks and crooks and mooks"
Summary: 5 Stars
MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN is a riff on the hard-boiled noir detective novel (a la Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane, Ross MacDonald, etc.) as told by a thirty-year-old with Tourette's Syndrome, Lionel Essrog by name. Lionel and three other orphans at the St. Vincent Home for Boys in Brooklyn were commandeered by a petty but charismatic criminal, Frank Minna (thus becoming the Minna Men), to carry out various and sundry jobs in support of Minna's criminal exploits. By so doing, Frank gave Lionel a life and a modicum of respectability and self-esteem. After Frank is murdered (at the end of an absolutely brilliant first chapter -- the high point of the novel), Lionel sets out on his own investigation to discover the killer(s) and wreak vengeance.
The plot is a little strained at times -- like many of the plots of the classic American detective novels that author Lethem is both honoring and parodying -- but it is good enough to provide a plausible vehicle for the novel's real strengths. They are twofold: one, the character of Lionel Essrog (one of the more unusual and memorable protagonists I have encountered) and his omnipresent struggles with his Tourette's; and two, a crackling and edgy hyperenergetic narrative, rife with imaginative wordplay, that is frequently punctuated with Lionel's own Tourettic and explosive verbal variations. I found the wordplay highly engaging, a sort of American's (or Brooklynite's) "Finnegan's Wake", although much less recondite. (What a challenge the novel must pose for a prospective translator! How would one render, for example, "the Kumquat Sasquatch"?)
I had read nothing by Jonathan Lethem and knew very little about him before I bought MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN while on a recent trip, having consumed the books I had brought with me. I am quite pleased with my discovery. While not a great novel, MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN is literate and very entertaining. If Lethem's other works are on the same plane, I have stumbled upon a worthwhile author.
Book Review: "You a car service or a comedy team?"
Summary: 4 Stars
In "Motherless Brooklyn," Jonathan Lethem melds several genres, among them the bildungsroman, psychological novel, literary parody--all in the occasionally transparent framework of a detective story. The most famous aspect of the book is its hero's Tourette syndrome (the influence of Oliver Sacks's work is quite apparent), but the neurological condition itself takes on a life of its own, simultaneously moving and comic--and an opportunity for Lethem to indulge in some freakishly inventive wordplay that owes as much to James Joyce as to Mad magazine and the Artist Formerly Known as Prince.
The opening scene is on a par with the best of pulp fiction. Eating White Castle sliders daintily arrayed in a row of six (a compulsive aspect of his neurosis), Lionel Essrog stakes out an Upper East Side Zen studio with his associate Gilbert Coney, with the two of them standing guard as their boss Frank Minna is inside, wired for sound and exchanging cryptic arguments with some unknown heavy. It's at this point that everything goes wrong, and the ensuing chase scene through Queens and murder in Brooklyn provide one of the novel's highlights.
Lionel and Gilbert are just two of the four orphans hired (adopted, really) by Minna for a detective agency masquerading as a car service. (One of the recurrent gags is the group's supply of creative explanations to prospective customers for the lack of cars.) As a Minna Man, Lionel finds a father figure and a family where his Tourette's is not ignored but nevertheless accepted; Tony's pet name for him, "the free human freak show," serves more as a term of endearment than as a slur and indicates Minna's moderately disguised understanding that Lionel is the savviest of the bunch (Minna's estranged wife tells Lionel the reason Minna finds him useful is because everyone thought he was "stupid").
It's the interplay of the characters and Lionel's bumbling entry into adulthood that provide most of the novel's interest. As for the noir-inspired plot: there's hardly a cliche that Lethem doesn't send up--Italian mobsters and an evil corporation, the intrusively clueless police officer and a traitorous colleague, a sequence of red-herring clues and an offstage murder. ("Have you ever felt, in the course of reading a detective novel, a guilty thrill of having a character murdered before he can step onto the page and burden you with his actual existence? Detective stories have too many characters anyway.")
Yet the crime story itself never lives up the dizzying pursuit of the opening scene, and Lethem faces the difficulty of writing a parody of authors who themselves wrote masterful parodies (e.g., "The Thin Man," "The High Window"). Instead, the potboiler elements play shotgun both to Lethem's neurological-intellectual wordplay and to the emotional growth of his lead character. Lethem's novel has "too many characters anyway," and he resists the temptation to let the mystery gum up the works.
That's not necessarily a bad thing--unless you're expecting an old-fashioned whodunit or keystone caper. But Lethem's novel is less a whodunit than a howdunit--or, in this case, how the author does it: creating an affecting protagonist whose tongue twitches with the pulse of the cultural zeitgeist.
Book Review: ...about an outcast, finding himself...
Summary: 2 Stars
I felt a little sorry for one of the main characters in this book. It's a clear reminder that the friendships we choose are the foundation of our progress. It is also an interesting NYC area (Brooklyn) psychological character study. The plot did not really capture me like other books I have read that have won Book Awards. It did make for some good reading and some very well-written & unforgettable lines. A recent college graduate raved about the book which made me curious. His excitement was a bit overdone as far as I was concerned because the story sort of fell flat with me. The book did succeed in keeping me awake (through a plane ride). One line I took away was, "Don't tug my boat!"Book Review: A Charming Book
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is about a bunch of low-life losers who follow another low-life loser and, by the way, solve a mystery. The main character is Lionel Essrog, an orphan who has never had a family (motherless) and never been out of his own little world (Brooklyn), yet is a likeable character who spits out profanities at inappropriate times due to his Tourette's Sydrome.
A delightful book with engaging characters. The mystery is more of a subplot to the character study of Essrog and his loser friends.