Motherless Brooklyn

A friend gave me Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem a while ago and I finally got down to reading it and enjoyed it despite it’s slightly precious premise: a detective with tourette’s syndrome taking down a Zen Buddhist bad guy. To be honest I was totally drawn in by the growing up in Brooklyn aspect of the story that took place early in the novel that provided the reasoning for the obsessiveness of Lionel Essrog’s investigation into the murder of his friend/boss/family member Frank Minna. The whole tourette’s thing was like showing off, in my opinion, it didn’t add much to the novel. New York is one of the few places in America that still seems very exotic to me-I’ve always wanted to live in Manhattan. I’m not sure that any of his other novels would appeal to me after reading the summaries of them at the end of the book. However, I did enjoy this one, and I would be willing to try another, but I think it would depend on the subject matter.

Comments

[lou ford]

read his first book, "gun with occasional music". it's a weird detective novel. it's good.

[Captain]

I tend to agree that the eccentricities sort of detracted from the story without adding much. And I thought the ending was a bit odd. But overall I enjoyed it. Lethem's contribution to Slate two years ago was interesting:

http://www.slate.com/id/2143634