Rating: 
Summary: What a great book!
Review: Motherless Brooklyn has got to be one of the best books I have ever read. Not only does it have a great plot, but the sheer depth of the characters is astounding. The main character Lionel Essrog is so vivid and real that you feel like you could practically reach out and touch him. A beautiful, moving portrait of a man with tourettes, in a world full of crime and conspiracy. What an amazing achievemnt!
Rating: 
Summary: overrated, but insightful re: tourette's
Review: Sorry but i couldn't wait to get this novel over with. I wanted to finish it, and had to force myself till the scattered ending. the book seems to me to have been dramatically overrated and was hard for me to concentrate on. Perhaps it just isn't my cup o' tea. However, like everyone else, it really gave the reader a greater perpective of what it may be like to live in the scattered mind of Tourette's.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and Engaging But Still A Detective Novel
Review: Detective novels aren't usually my favorite genre of books. About one every year or two is usually enough to remind me of the limited plot lines available and usually curbs my appetite for more quite nicely. However, that is not to say that such novels can't be entertaining, engaging and well-written, as is the case with Motherless Brooklyn. By bringing Tourette's Syndrome into the mix, Jonathan Lethem has added a welcome wrinkle to the classic style of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, whose Philip Marlowe is a noted inspiration. The story of Lionel Essrog's life as a small-time Brooklyn mook and his search to find the killer of his mentor and boss is eclipsed by Lionel's Tourettic ticcing and makes the book an extremely enjoyable read. I have no idea whether Lethem has the syndrome pegged perfectly, but he writes Lionel's character very convincingly, with both the humor and the pity Essrog deserves and needs to be the book's true hero. Lionel has a line near the end of the book, "It's a Tourette's thing, you wouldn't understand." While that may be true at the beginning of the book, Lethem makes us understand, and care, before it's all over. I enjoyed Motherless Brooklyn more than I like most detective novels. Were I any kind of fan of the genre, I'd have given it four stars. I'm just not sure I should have to read about double-crosses, late night stakeouts, car chases and lipsticked women to enjoy the good writing and interesting characters (not because of what they are, but who the are) this book offers.
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Summary: Great non-traditional mystery
Review: Highly recommended. Reminds me of George Pelecanos's mysteries.
Rating:
Summary: Compelling hero .
Review: The hero and portrait of the Tourette's world are captivating. The plot is sub-standard, the secondary characters all one dimensional.
Rating:
Summary: Good but falls apart at the end...
Review: Wonderful storyteller, great story, unusual plot...but I must admit the end was only so-so compared to the rest which is wonderful. For that reason I can't give it a higher rating. I look forward to Jonathan Lethem's next novel to seee how he develops as a writer.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty Darn Good
Review: This is an usual book, well worth reading, very innovative, and lots of fun. The story concerns Lionel Essrog, an orphan taken in by a low-level Mafia type. Essrog suffers from Tourett's disease, which causes him to have verbal tics and engage in compulsive behavior. The Mafia guy, a father figure, employs Essrog and his orphan buddies as private eyes, but when the Mafia guy is killed, Essrog takes on his first serious case: finding who murdered his best friend. So far, so good. We have a classic genre opening, and a fine literary twist. A P.I. with Tourett's may seem absurd, and I found it a bit over-the-top when I started reading, but it actually makes more and more sense as the plot unfolds. And ultimately, the Tourett's element is the creative heart of this very entertaining novel and precisely what makes it so much fun. The bits that have nothing to do with the mystery plot (most notably Essrog's recollections of his childhood and early involvement with his Mafia patron) prove to be the most absorbing and moving sequences. The narrator's verbal tics are relentlessly clever, and quite frequently hilarious. As a literary novel, then, the book is entirely successful and a wonderful read. It loses a star (really a half star, but Amazon doesn't allow for that nuance) for the mystery element, which I found undercooked. I never really cared who did it, and I never really cared about the mystery itself. What makes this book remarkable is the fact that I didn't especially care that I didn't care. The writing and characters, especially Essrog, were enough to keep me turning the pages.
Rating:
Summary: Not Your Father's P.I. Novel
Review: If you're one of these dull-witted readers that wants the same thing over and over again -- Private eyes with slick catch phrases and a trenchcoat, smooth with the ladies and quick with a rod -- then this isn't the book for you. But if you're an intelligent reader who cares about inovavative characters in a good work of fiction, then you want MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN. Lethem's novel turns the hardboiled private eye conventions on their collective head. This is a great read about a strange and charming character who just happens to be a private eye
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Summary: Fascinating account of life with Tourette's (altho fiction)
Review: I am a physician who treats a great number of children/adolescents with Tourette's syndrome. This book aptly describes the day to day difficulties that so many individuals with OCD and Tourette's must face. However, it is also a heartening fictional account of a story of overcoming those difficulties, and the protagonist is portrayed as a smart, insightful and hard-working individual who achieves success. The detective story is almost secondary to the primary neuropsychological plot line, but it is a wonderful twist on an old stand-by. The story works, and I recommend it for people living with Tourette's, as well as for those who might encounter others with the illness (all of us!). Although treatments for this disorder exist, the protagonist refuses to take them, as he has experienced (like so many of our patients) undue side-effects that don't seem to be worth the results. New medications and treatment modalities need to be developed, and perhaps this story and others will help raise awareness of the need for safer, more effective interventions.
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Summary: Readmebailey!
Review: Lionel Essrog cracked me up. My husband woke up in the middle of the night saying, "Earthquake!" but it was just me laughing silently and shaking the bed. Lionel has Tourrette's Syndrome and his tics lead him to burst out the funniest lines in the book. One of his standbys is "Eatmebailey". We never find out who Bailey is. That would have been a much better plot line than the detective story Lethem came up with. I agree with some other reviewers that this should not have been a detective novel. As soon as the flashback to his childhood is over and Lionel starts looking for the killer, whatever literary genius Lethem had rolling came to a screeching halt. It was stock, with a twist; but not enough of a twist to warrant the overblown heraldings of "Motherless Brooklyn" as the newest installment in American literature. If Lethem had just left out the detective story and found a better plot for Lionel to come into his own, then it would warrant all of the high praise it has received. Maybe next time, but I will definitely keep my eye on Jonathan Lethem. Read this book for the sheer of enjoyment of listening to Lionel, and try not to let the plot get in your way.
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