Motherless Brooklyn [Mass Market Paperback]

Jonathan Lethem (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1998

A paperback original in the U.K.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Faber and Faber; 1st U.K. edition (1998)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000PGGPZ8
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (234 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,921,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jonathan Lethem was born in New York and attended Bennington College.

He is the author of seven novels including Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, which was named Novel of the Year by Esquire and won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Salon Book Award, as well as the Macallan Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger.

He has also written two short story collections, a novella and a collection of essays, edited The Vintage Book of Amnesia, guest-edited The Year's Best Music Writing 2002, and was the founding fiction editor of Fence magazine.

His writings have appeared in the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, McSweeney's and many other periodicals.

He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Authentically bizarre, March 14, 2000

By 

Bill Loehfelm - See all my reviews

This review is from: Motherless Brooklyn (Hardcover)

Pleased to see Lethem's novel won the critic's circle award. Lethem's masterstroke is his narrator; Essrog is utterly believable. Often I wished hard he would just shut up and get on with solving the case, but there was no way I was going to stop reading. A very human reaction to a fictional character. Once you accept the Tourette's as part of the rhythm of the book it becomes a fascinating element of the character. As a former Brooklynite, I found Lethem's depiction of that area dead-on accurate (down to Rusty Staub and "half a fag") and beautifully realized without going over the top. Wonderful choice of words without overdoing it. Brooklyn becomes a main character with as valuable and intimate role in the story as any of the people. By the end I had a hard time believing Lethem was not a Brooklyn raised orphan with Tourette's. An entertaining, compelling and intelligent work. The defintion of excellent fiction.

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A darkly comic tale, with a detective with a difference., November 29, 1999

By 

Margaret Fiore - See all my reviews

This review is from: Motherless Brooklyn (Hardcover)

Lionel is one of four orphans from St. Vincent's who are recruited by a small-time New York hood for grunt work. Afflicted by Tourette's, Lionel drives most people crazy, but he tickles his mentor's sense of humor. All four orphans (the "motherless Brooklyn" of the title) look up to their leader, but Lionel's admiration includes a large component of unstated love.

When his father figure is murdered in the street, Lionel is the only one of the four no-longer-boys with the intellect, loyalty, and determination to find out what really happened.

Previously a science fiction author, in this book, Lethem takes off into reality like a rocket. The only alien landscape we view here is the inside of the Tourette-inflicted mind, and Lionel is as alien as it gets. But his tics and hollers are the fuller realizations of our own small compulsions and fascinations. They bring the reader right into his mind and body. Despite the pace of the action, and constant plot twists and developments (he tells this story walking, alright) his is an internal journey, and very human.

This is an absolutely riveting good book.

33 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An astounding step in detective fiction!, February 15, 2000

By 

Christian "Writer/Human" (Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Motherless Brooklyn (Hardcover)

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!