Rating: 
Summary: Captivating Despite Controversy
Review: I was fascinated by Jonathan Lethem's "Fortress of Solitude." I couldn't help but be struck by the parallel writing style of Lethem to that of Rikki Lee Travolta's "My Fractured Life" in describing friendship despite differences and controversy. Lethem perfectly dissects the growing pains of friendship in spite of differences (in this case black and white race differences in Brooklyn). I was both fascinated and captivated.
Rating:
Summary: stellar -- the Great American Novel
Review: THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE is nothing less than stellar. I can't encapsulate my joy and awe for this book in a short review. Lethem weaves gorgeous, unique prose around funny, poignant, perceptive subject matter. I couldn't get enough of this amazing epic; this is truly one of the great American novels.
Rating: 
Summary: an evocative, convincing bildungsroman
Review: aeroman is dead; long live aeroman! another chapter in lethem's motherless brooklyn theme, Fortress of Solitude will transport you into a game of spaldeen on a summer day when you were very young. lethem's writing is lucid and poetic, the characters rounded and seductive and the plot, while lazy and extended like that long-ago summer day, very effective as a bildungsroman. Aeroman's ring of power and Running Crab's postcard commentaries are two unique features of the novel; they require a willful suspension of disbelief that you're willing to grant because lethem is so gifted and convincing. some reviewers criticised the title of the book, but i think it's appropriate, for with all the references to super heroes, it makes sense that dylan should seek (and find, eventually) a fortress of solitude, where he can rest and re-gather, just like superman did.
Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: The characterizations are brilliant, including the living character of Brooklyn. The dialogue is unerring. The tracing of the arc of childhood and adolescence is remarkable. The protagonist is Dylan, and his process and quests and divisions and disappointments and challenges and growth are humorous and heart-breaking. The magical realism expands the book into the realm of the soul. The book rewarded every hour I spent with it. Kudos to the author for his art.
Rating:
Summary: Characters that could be personal friends
Review: Jonathan Lethem's novel develops characters so well that you could mistake their idiosyncrasies for your own. Dylan's life is at once lonely and fulfilling as he grapples with his own identity and happiness, trying to piece together the events and people that are most important in his life. Lethem's descriptions of Brooklyn feel genuine and effortless, as if this story wasn't so much a novel as a dictation of his heart. As a music lover, Dylan's passion for soul and R & B is contagious and his memories of songs and artists recall the acute nostalgia of a summer pop song you haven't heard in years. I can't recommend this book highly enough.
Rating:
Summary: The bottle city
Review: The Fortress of Solitude, like the bottle city of Kandor that resides in its namesake, is a perfect, living miniatureÑa world captured between two covers. The world so carefully evoked is the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn in the mid-1970s, just before its transformation at the hands of gentrification and crack cocaine. With painstaking, loving care, Lethem has recreated GowanusÕ brownstones and bodegas, its slang, its games, its drugs, its music. It is a sprawling, exquisitely rendered account of long afternoons of stoopball, the illicit thrills of shoplifting and reefer, the joy of the graffiti artist, and, more than anything else, the sweet, healing pain of soul music.ItÕs too simple to say that The Fortress of Solitude is a novel about growing up white in a black neighborhood. ItÕs also too simple to say that it is a novel about race relations. It is also a novel about missing mothers and the relationships between fathers and sons; about comics (Marvel, not DC, despite the title); about graffiti, drugs, and music (soul, funk, punk, and rap); about what an ordinary pair of boysÑone white, one blackÑmight do with superpowers.
Rating:
Summary: SLOW BUT IN A GOOD WAY
Review: It took me a little while to get into this one and having not read Lethem's work before, I found the early chapters plodding, but before I lost all interest, he would grab me again. I'm happy to say I stuck with it and was rewarded for it. Parallels to "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" are inevitable, but this is a very different story, etched in the grit of Brooklyn sidewalks like a game of Skully. I fell hard for Dylan and Mingus and as I saw through them my childhood fantasy of becoming magically super-powered, I went from plodding through to taking my time, as I had done with Chabon's counterpart. A great double-feature if they ever turn these into movies.
Rating:
Summary: FILLED WITH GREAT MEANING
Review: Set in the Bronx amid a period of integration and spanning decades, "FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE" is not only a fascinating book but an impacting and meaning-filled one at that. The title of the book is a reference to comic hero Superman's secret layer in which he may try to escape for the briefest of moments the pains and pressures of the world's reliance on him. It is a deliberate reference and one of multiple meanings. Most obvious is the use of comic heroes as figures of authority for a character who lacks such role models in his real life. On a more figurative level, the reference is to everyone's need to escape the feeling of being alone in a crowded world by seeking out a place to literally be alone away. Judged on impact and merit, "FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE" is in the same league as "MY FRACTURED LIFE" and "ATONEMENT."
Rating:
Summary: This is a good book
Review: This book was really good. It took me a little while to get into (about the first 75-80 pages) but it was worth it. I bought the book a while back and never touched it until about 5 days ago. It only took me 4 days to read the mamoth thing and it literaly became an extension of my body. In those few days I spent reading the characters became people I knew, even the ones that were only brought up a few times. Dean Street was my street and Brooklyn was my home. I highly recomend this book to anyone because everyone will be able to relate on some level. Even if you didn't grow up poor and white in Brooklyn.
Rating:
Summary: Like a Bob Dylan Song
Review: Like a Bob Dylan song, "Fortress of Solitude" is a poetic and biting commentary on the human condition without resorting to being flowery, angry, or political. It is simply a fantastic book about coming of age in the face of adversity. The reviewer who made the comparison to "My Fractured Life" by Rikki Lee Travolta raises a valid point. There is the struggle for identity, the fallen idol, the inherent sense of tragedy, and the spanning of time. There is also the incredible subtle undertones of the main characters of both books being fascinated with superheroes because they represent a pain-free life that contrasts the brutal reality they - the hurt child inside - have struggled to live through. Many writers have tried to capture that kind of fascination but fall into the fantasy world the heroes represent as opposed to keeping that world distanced and maintaining a true sense of reality to the writing. "The Fortress of Solitude" and "My Fractured Life" are the only two books I've read that manage to fully maintain that divide and cement the integrity of the reality of the story.
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