By: Jonathan Lethem Publisher: Vintage Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Vintage Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 336 Publication Date: October 24, 2000 Release Date: October 24, 2000
Product Description: From America's most inventive novelist, Jonathan Lethem, comes this compelling and compulsive riff on the classic detective novel.
Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he sets them are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatally stabbed, one of Lionel's colleagues lands in jail, the other two vie for his position, and the victim's widow skips town. Lionel's world is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case while trying to keep the words straight in his head. Motherless Brooklyn is a brilliantly original homage to the classic detective novel by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation.
Amazon.com: Pop quiz. Please complete the following sentence: "There are days when I get up in the morning and stagger into the bathroom and begin running water and then I look up and I don't even recognize my own _." If you answered face, then your name is obviously not Jonathan Lethem. Instead of taking the easy out, the genre-busting novelist concludes this by-the-numbers string of words with toothbrush in the mirror.
This brilliant sentence and a lot of other really excellent ones compose Lethem's engaging fifth novel, Motherless Brooklyn. Lionel Essrog, a detective suffering from Tourette's syndrome, spins the narrative as he tracks down the killer of his boss, Frank Minna. Minna enlisted Lionel and his friends when they were teenagers living at Saint Vincent's Home for Boys, ostensibly to perform odd jobs (we're talking very odd) and over the years trained them to become a team of investigators. The Minna men face their most daunting case when they find their mentor in a Dumpster bleeding from stab wounds delivered by an assailant whose identity he refuses to reveal--even while he's dying on the way to the hospital.
Detectives? Brooklyn? Is this the same Lethem who danced the postapocalypso in Amnesia Moon? Incredibly, yes, and rarely has such a departure been pulled off with this much aplomb. As in the "toothbrush" passage above, Lethem sets himself up with the imposing task of making tired conventions new. Brooklyn accents? Fuggetaboutit. Lethem's dialogue is as light on its feet as a prize fighter. Lionel's Tourette's could have been an easy joke, but Lethem probes so convincingly into the disorder that you feel simultaneously rattled, sympathetic, and irritated by the guy. Sure, the story is a mystery, but Motherless Brooklyn could be about flower arranging, for all we care. What counts is Lionel's tic-ridden take on a world full of surprises, propelling this fiction forward at edgy, breakneck speed. --Ryan Boudinot
So Much Fun to Read! This book had fabulous characters, a suspenseful, complicated plot, and wonderful writing. I often laughed aloud and read sections aloud to my husband. So imaginative, creative, and compelling. I'd give it another star if I could!
Wonderful and original This is a great book and very original. It blends together originality, an insight into Tourette's syndrome and a detective novel without losing anything on the way.
Highly recommended.
The star of small time In "Motherless Brooklyn", Lethem created a world of small time. Small time mobsters employ much smaller time Frank Minna who employs tiny time Minna Men, of whom Lionel Essrog is the star. His star status is not obvious to everyone. To most around him he officially is a freak, with outbursts of verbal gobbledygook and repetitive jerky motions which scare and befuddle people. Minna, his one real friend, has known him for a smart guy all along, but this is only revealed by the end of the book. And it is at the end of the book that Minna's wife sees Lionel the way Minna saw him and that Lionel ends up earning respectful treatment even from the mobsters.
The readers are in a much better position. We see Lionel as a star from the very first pages: we would much rather listen to him than to any other character in the book. His Tourette's tics are hilarious, and his irony, borne out of inability to suppress them, no less amusing ("You are Lionel Essrog, aren't you?" - "Unreliable Cheesegrub", I corrected). This freaky schlemiel, this giant fly on the wall turns out to be the star student of Minna's and acts as a veritable wise guy: he takes matters into his hands, figures out interests and roles of one organization and 5-6 individuals involved, avenges the death of his friend and negotiates a saner life for him and his friends.
The spirited portrait of Lionel is fresh and memorable. The supporting characters are cast in vivid colors: take the colossal Polish hit man squeezing the juices out of kumquats or a flock of nervous doormen playing mafia...
A beautiful portrait in a fetching frame.
A gift from a friend on Court Street in Brooklyn An old friend of mine gave me this book as a gift. He is my only real connection with Brooklyn. I visited him there several times when he lived on Court Street and we walked its length while he told me stories about his experiences in the neighborhood and the minor wiseguys who sat at the table outside the Italian grocery across the street from his apartment.
Motherless Brooklyn was a gift he chose presumably because of this brief, shared Court Street experience. Much of Motherless Brooklyn takes place on our around Court Street and its place names like Cobble Hill and Carroll Garden are familiar to me. It was a sweet gift.
I've just finished reading it and I really enjoyed it. It was difficult to put down.
It is an endearing story of New York - endearing in spite of its themes of homicide and betrayal. The narrator - an orphan, a borderline gangster/hood with a serious case of Tourette's Syndrome endears himself to the reader.
I loved a scene later in the book that took place in Coastal Maine. It was written by someone who clearly understands and loves the region.
Memorable, Also Wearying When I heard of an upcoming movie with Edward Norton (one of my favorite actors), and discovered it would be based on a Jonathan Lethem novel, I was compelled to read "Motherless Brooklyn" for myself. I'm new to Lethem's work, and so it was with great relish that I found myself swept into the rich and strange world of a man with Tourette's.
Lionel Essrog is a masterful creation, one of those fictional characters that can carry, even overwhelm, a story--as he does here. He's an orphan, a kid growing into a man on the streets of Brooklyn. Lethem opens his story with a stake-out and then the untimely--and by no means natural--passing of a fatherly figure in Essrog's life. From there, Lethem leads us through the rabbit warrens of Essrog's thinking processes, while Essrog tries to deduce the perpetrator of the crime. Essrog's character and his interactions with others, not to mention his own internal struggles, elevate this average mystery plot into something more.
Essrog is alternately funny, wise, and eccentric. At times, I found myself simply weary of being in his presence. This underlines Lethem's ability to capture the ticcing personality of his protagonist, but it also led to occasional distractions for me. Or maybe I was simply mirroring. Without Essrog's rants and rambles, the book would be cut in half, leaving a bare-bones mystery.
If you enjoy memorable and quirky characters in your novels, this book is one not to be missed. I can't wait to see Ed Norton's portrayal of Essrog, and I can only hope they capture Lethem's magic on the screen.
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