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Summary: An astounding step in detective fiction!
Review: Lionel Essrog, aka "Freakshow" to his fellow constituents at the L&L Car Service, a front for the L&L Detective Agency, is the Holden Caulfield of this century--if "Catcher in the Rye" had been told by Raymond Chandler instead of Salinger. This Tourette-riddled narrator guides the reader, albeit in a loopy and rapid-fire free association, through his life in Brooklyn. An orphan boy, though we're really not certain if even that is true, he is "adopted" by Frank Minna, an errand runner for unsavory crime figures, and taken under Minna's wing, despite his "freakshow" qualities. When Minna is murdered, Lionel takes it upon himself to find his friends killer. The journey will be one not soon forgotten. Lethem ably and aptly deploys his amazing writing skills once again in his fifth fiction outing. After three consecutive readings, I have chosen this novel as the most important and best novel I have ever had the (repeated) pleasure of laying my eyes and hands on. If you don't read this book, give up reading!
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Summary: I'm missing something (Eggnog! Essrog! Leapfrog! Woof!)
Review: I, too, was drawn in to the story immediately, charmed by Lionel, impressed with Lethem's wordplay, intrigued by the mystery itself and enjoyed myself for 2/3 of the book. It bogs down when Lethem's homage to Chandler/Hammett/Ross MacDonald becomes more like a Chandler novel and less like life. The dichotomy between the world of this novel and the world of Chanlder give the book its "omph" but when the novel apes the noir masters (updating them, of course, for the PC nineties i.e. instead of the detective being an alcoholic, he has Tourette's; instead of say, a gypsty fortune teller as a front for an opium ring,it's a Buddhist temple as a front for a hifalutin NYC building) it becomes more like a book you've read before. When this book is at it's best, it's funny and sadall at once because it feels true and messy and life-like and very "un-Chandler". Whenever it crosses the line into the grim world of the Hardboiled, it falters.
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Summary: Great Story; Unforgettable Characters
Review: Right from the first few paragraphs this book drew me into another world. I was afraid that Letham's New York story would be full of cliches, but that is definitely not the case here because it's told through the filter of its Tourette's Syndrome hero - an unforgettable guy who is funny, charming and smart, dealing with way more than you think he can handle. Letham never goes beyond the possible though, and leaves you feeling that if you traveled to this Brooklyn neighborhood, you might actually meet his characters on the street. A very memorable and enjoyable book.
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Summary: A Reinvention of the Mystery Genre
Review: This is a very clever book, the best mystery I've read in years. And despite what you read in the other reviews here, it *is* a mystery. Original detective stories were the first interactive fiction, based on a contest of logic between reader and writer, between watcher and speaker as it were -- playing with the abstract dissonance between the two. Never mind that the characters were cartoons and the writing was plain. That's just background to the real drama. (That is until we stumbled into the corrective mannerisms of the current gloomy crop of deep pschological characterizations in so-called mysteries.) The essence of literature (at least me) is whether and how you can create ambiguities between your own conscious eye and that/those which the author creates. Here, we have a work where that ambiguity is built in to the narrator. Brilliant, much more orignal than Fowles. And it restores the game of woven logics in a new way, more within the page, which of course has the effect of bringing it deeper into the readers mind. This isn't a novel -- it's better, a reinvention of the mystery.
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Summary: Essrog Eggnog
Review: By now you've read the other reviews about this novel and you are well aware of the hook that the narrator Essrog suffers from turrettes syndrome. This works in a slapstick kind of way, but Lethem knows better than to keep it as a joke. The reader is placed pretty fully into Essrog's world, and we understand and feel his history, his development as a person as well as have fun reading his bizarre ramblings. This is probably Lethem's best example of deft character development to date. On top of this, the turettes functions in a way that allows Lethem lots of room for fun and pretty inventive word play. A lot to accomplish in a novel framed as a standard hard-boiled mystery. My only main complain comes in the last chapter, when much of the background manipulations come forward and are explained away almost too quickly.
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Summary: wonderfully done
Review: This is just a terrific book. Lethem's evocation of the unforgettable, Tourette's-suffering narrator, Lionel Essrog, is just amazing. Lethem takes you right into the mind of a Tourette's sufferer with emotionally compelling and often hilarious results. The story of Lionel and his fellow "Minna Men" and what happens after the murder of their mentor and psuedo-father, Frank Minna, is entertaining in its own right. Though I wouldn't change a thing, I was sorry this book was only 300 pages, because I would've liked to spend a lot more time with it.
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Summary: Flawless Brooklyn
Review: At first glance should this book be this good? The story is not that complex compared to many other mysteries and the main revelation is not earthshaking. Yet it is one of the best books I have ever had the pleasure of opening. The reason it is such a wonderful read is that all of the characters are deeply textured and wonderfully written. The Obsessive Compulsive/Turetts smitten protagonist is the ultimate loser hero. From page one you want to root for him. The superb back story gives you a perfect understanding of the personalities of everyone in the novel and the dialog is both hilarious and credible. Quirky had no definition until this book came out. But the keeper for me was the wonderful picture of NY painted with Lethem's wonderfully adroit brush. I grew up in the Bronx and have lived here for 18 years and no single writter has captured the pulse of not just Manhattan but the boroughs as well as Lethem. The time has come, Elmore Leonard has met his match.
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Summary: The Last Lord of Flatbush
Review: Like the Balloon Man in Central Park, Jonathan Lethem has taken the straightforward noir detective genre and twisted up a tail, turned out a neck, puffed up a chest and pulled out a pair of wings until it has become a fable for our times. Lionel Essrog is the quintessential Ugly Duckling. Abandoned by his parents, who in all probability could not deal with his Tourette's Syndrome, Lionel grows up in an orphanage. In typical "boys will be boys" fashion, he is dubbed "Freakshow" and denigrated at every turn. Then along comes Frank Minna, a small-time Brooklyn mobster, who become's Lionel's surrogate father. Lionel and his orphan friends become The Minna Men, running errands for the mob, but Lionel remains oblivious to being used. When Frank is fatally shot, even he abandons Lionel to the Code of Omerta, a concept completely alien to a Touretter. With fierce loyalty and a mission to do what is right, Lionel sets out to find Frank's killers. When Minna Men abandon him for other agendas, he simply redoubles his efforts. And just when you think he has found a love interest, one as uncontrolled in her naivete as he is in his speech, even she abandons him. Lionel navigates this sea of human cruelty simply by defining everything in terms of himself. This is raw survival - a novel totally absorbed in the self-consciousness of its protagonist. His jackhammer epithets are at first funny, then discomforting, then annoying, until Lionel brings you full circle into how utterly uncontrollable it all is. You begin to feel devastated when he blurts out secrets that will do him harm. You try to esp insights to him, knowing he knows exactly what to do but just can't help himself. In the end, Lionel has won you over totally and completely. Lethem probably began this novel on a dare - can a writer exhibit the technical wizardry necessary to pull off a protagonist with Tourette's Syndrome. By the end of the book, you can tell that Lionel has won over Lethem as well. Lionel Essrog is a fully realized and achingly human character, a swan, no less.
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Summary: How do you aptly praise this wonderful thing?
Review: it's a little misleading to call mr. lethem a "science fiction" author, or author of detective novels. he morphs literary genre in a way that can be found nowhere, and i mean nowhere else in american fiction. he wrote a western disguised as a science fiction novel, for heaven's sake. Motherless Brooklyn is the rarest of books--a rippingly good tale, a look at us at the millenium through the eyes of the most god-awful wonderful character i can remember since, well, since i don't know when. an orphan who touches the motherlessness in all of us. lionel's tourettic verbal bombasts are the loving work of a novelist in love with our language, celebrating our culture, warts and all. Mr. Lethem will dazzle you. you'll understand what holden caulfield meant when he said that you'd like to call up a writer after reading an extraordinary book and just shoot the bull. Yes, it is a detective story; yes, it is a coming-of-age story; yes, it is a spiritual mystery; yes, it is what silly, sensitive wannabees like myself thrust at you, looking for that deep, silly, sensitive spot in your eyes, saying with eyes a-mist, "read this, it's a masterpiece."
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Summary: This book is too good to be a movie
Review: I believe I read in Variety that the rights were sold to the movies for Motherless Brooklyn. I'm happy for the author but what makes this book tick is its love of language and its affection for the narrator Lionel. I'm not sure a screenwriter could succeed in getting us inside Lionel's as well as Lethem. There's much suspense in this novel as well, which is why it would appeal to Hollywood, but ultimately what kept me going was the thorough believability of Lionel. One of the few new novels I wanted to read again right away (Evening by Susan Minot was another). This is my first taste of Lethem and it can't wait to sample more.
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