Rating: 
Summary: Lethem is Essrog
Review: I met Lethem in St.Paul at a reading for "Botherless Mrooklyn" (ha ha) Came in looking for Ellroy and Pelecanos and, after listening to him, came out craddling his latest. He is a very bold reader and a very shy conversationist, I imagine kinda like Lionel Essrog. I guess that charming dichotomy sold me. The book, our matter of discussion here, rules, it's very good, but it's not a mistery, I warn you, even if it has most of the elements, mostly the dialogue and language. It's not "L.A. Confidential" not "King Suckerman" although it's as enjoyable as any of them.
Rating: 
Summary: Lionel Essrog lives!
Review: Not a detective story in the conventional sense, Motherless Brooklyn is as much the story of Lionel Essrog as it is the story of a murder, and in this sense it is particularly appealing. Essrog is doubly removed from the mainstream-he has grown up in an orphanage without the kind of nurturing which gives humans their ability to empathize with each other, and he has Tourette's Syndrome, which makes him involuntarily touch and pat objects, count or repeat actions, and, most annoyingly for him, blurt out nonsense, rhymes, and sometimes obscenities at oftentimes inappropriate moments. He is not an easy character to identify with.Yet Jonathan Lethem, the author, is not using the Tourette's symptoms as a literary trick. He makes the reader care about Lionel without pitying him. Lionel is trying to find the murderer of Frank Minna, a somewhat shady character who has mentored Lionel and three others from the orphanage since they were young teenagers. Lionel comes to believe that he may be the only one who cares enough about Frank to be able to solve his murder, and he begins to think that Frank counted on him to do this by the statements and actions he made in the moments immediately before and after he received his fatal wounds. As Lionel works to find Frank's killer, as he tries to attract a woman and sustain a relationship, and as he evaluates the relationships he has had with the other orphans, Lionel becomes more mature and more aware of his unusual relationships with the outside world. The author's recreation of the Tourette world is so vivid and realistic that I (like other readers, perhaps) looked up information about the author himself experienced this syndrome. (No.) His imaginative descriptions, especially those presented from Lionel's point of view, are often both humorous and uniquely offbeat. And his ability to keep the reader fascinated with this character and his story is absolutely dazzling.
Rating:
Summary: Great writing, great story, great read!
Review: I loved Jonathan Lethem's writing, full of great turns of phrase and lots of imagery. The odd, painful yet often comic symptoms of Tourette Syndrome made for a fascinating and rich character, Lionel Essrog. The great writing and interesting character and plot developments assured that Tourette's did not just play as a gimmick in this novel . I not only enjoyed the murder mystery itself and the flavor of New York city and small-time wise guys but the language and essence of the characters kept me involved from cover to cover.
Rating:
Summary: Reinventing the hardboiled story
Review: Mysteries, particularly those of Chandler and Hammett, have always been about language. Listen to Spade or Marlowe talk and you're more afraid of their mouths than their guns. Lethem seems to understand this intuitively and his new novel is a terrific subversion/inversion/reinvention (pick your poison) of the genre. That Essrog is saddled with Tourette's opens wonderful avenues for Lethem to explore. I've rarely seen a book in which every choice the novelist makes is so dead on. This is going on the eye-level shelf on my bookcase at home.
Rating:
Summary: Taking A Bite Out Of Crime
Review: It seems very difficult to review this book within the constraints of Amazon's five star parameters. This is a wonderful story on many levels. Lethem not only created an entertaining and atmospheric mystery, he also envisioned a primary character whose Tourettic impulses perfectly match the pace and tone of the story. Lionel's frequent outbursts and irresistible urges do not exist merely as painful comic relief, they also reflect the thought processes that most people(both fictional and otherwise) naturally supress. In the hands of another writer, this may have come across as gimmicky or contrived. However, Lethem demonstrates his talent in a keenly subtle manner that provides a perfect balance between the important elements of an intriguing story. I had enjoyed his earlier book, "Girl In Landscape", though their styles are remarkably different. With "Motherless Brooklyn", he has seamlessly bridged several genres and produced a great novel. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A Frayed Knot
Review: It's been a week since I read this book, and I still flinch every time I pass a big sign reading BAILEY on my way to work. Luckily, the rest of my symptoms seem to be fading and I think I can get back to something like a normal life. This is not an option for Lionel Essrog, the shattered hero of this book: he has Tourette's Syndrome, and he is forced to count, rap, bark, and curse his way through a deadly minefield of aging mobsters, Zen Buddhism, and indifference. Lionel's one of the four orphans that wiseguy Frank Minna recruited out of all motherless Brooklyn to be his helpers; now Lionel is compelled to unravel the messy case that ended with Frank stabbed in a dumpster. Hampered by his tendency to introduce himself as 'Vinyl Bullfrog,' poor Lionel searches for clues, completely confusing a homicide detective into adding Tourette to his suspect list and woos a pretty girl while discovering the incompatibility of Zen meditation and violent verbal expostulations. As he dodges a gigantic kumquat-munching hit man and wonders what his fellow orphans know that he doesn't, Lionel doggedly defends the center of his chaotic life: Frank and the other orphan 'Minna Men,' who accept his tics and serve as his family. And he rises to the challenge like a true hero, descending into the underworld for information and slaying his dragons, public and private, avenging his father-figure, and winning a space for his 'family' to endure. Lethem's got hold of a live wire here; this is a story that twitches off the pages and demands your attention. If you pay attention you can also learn about Tourette's Cat and the connection between Tourette's, The Artist Chronically Known as Prince, and Don Martin cartoons. There's a mystery here, rolled up in a crime novel and cross-indexed with a medical case history, and narrated by one of the most engaging nuts in recent fiction. The Fickle Muse was sitting in Lethem's lap when he wrote this one.
Rating:
Summary: A mother of a book!
Review: This is a great book. It sounds gimmicky but it's a great read and a very interesting, thought-provoking story. The setting is dead-on and captures not just Brooklyn but neighborhoods in Brooklyn perfectly. I was continually surprised by the twisting plot and the characters' growth. It's nice to read an author who doesn't feel he's stooping to the mystery genre but sees it as an opportunity to explore his creativity in a new direction. A sequel would appear to be unlikely but I'd really love to read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Mixed feelings...
Review: The first 100 pages of this book were terrific. Great voice... great character development, of both the main character and the 3 other Minna men. But then, the first 100 pages were all flashback. Once we returned to the main thread of the story, I felt the narrative thrust slowed down, and even came to a halt. A strange series of events began unfolding, none of which really helped the reader understand the crime which had been committed. The crime was unraveled in the final 30 pages in which Lionel finds out what happened through Julia's explanation, not really through his own sleuthing. This section, by the way, felt like a return to the beautiful prose from the beginning of the book. Gripping narrative in and of itself, although unsatisfying since the solution is being handed to us. It's not a solution we could have arrived at by ourselves through clues dropped within the body of the work. So... is this the neo-detective story, one in which plotline is secondary to character development? Fine, I'll buy it, but why bother making it a detective story? For beautiful writing and memorable characters, I would have graded it 5 stars. But for a detective story, and all the baggage and expectations that encompass that genre, I would have given it 2 stars. Average it out at 3 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting and captivating
Review: It's a very good read - a good entrance into the mind of a character with Tourette's syndrome - very believable in that capacity and thought provoking. Some of the characters were a little too fictional - but very entertaining on the whole.
Rating:
Summary: On my all-time Top 25 list.
Review: Lethem is a master of dialogue. Every character has a unique speech pattern. Essrog's ticcing deservedly gets most of the critical attention, but don't overlook the distinguishable speech quirks of the other characters (ie. Rockaforte and Matricardi). I'm not a big fan of either mobster plots or sci-fi, yet I couldn't put down Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn or his Girl in Landscape (sci-fi, sort of.) Aspiring writers (prose or especially plays) should definitely read this to see how a master handles dialogue. Thank you Mr. Lethem!
|
