A Review of Motherless Brooklyn

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. Some smart, talented writer was going to figure out what Joycean possibilities for wordplay Tourette's syndrome affords, and I'm so glad Lethem got there before David Foster Wallace. This book is on the (very) surface an affectionate literary updating of the noir novel, but its genius lies in its depiction of its central character—Lionel Essrog, an orphaned young man afflicted with both Tourette's and hero worship—and its other central character, Brooklyn. This is a page-turner that's antic, funny, scary, and distinct. Lethem's ability to defy genre pigeonholes is special, and Motherless Brooklyn is his best book yet.

—Mark Winegardner

...Philip Marlowe would blush. And tip his fedora.

Some audio books make listening...more than a convenience and a mindless diversion. The author's work is enhanced, and the enjoyment of the reader-turned listener is heightened...Motherless Brooklyn is such an audio book""Part detective novel and part literary fantasia..."Superbly balances beautiful writing and an engrossing plot.

At once gripping, mournful, touching and comic...one of the greatest feats of first-person narration in recent American fiction. Philip Marlowe would blush. And tip his fedora.

The short and shady life of Frank Minna ends in murder, shocking the four young men employed by his dysfunctional Brooklyn detective agency/limo service. The "Minna Men" have centered their lives around Frank, ever since he selected them as errand boys from the orphaned teen population at St. Vincent's Home. Most grateful is narrator Lionel. While not exactly well treated -- his nickname is "Freakshow" -- Tourette's-afflicted Lionel has found security as a Minna Man and is shattered by Frank's death. Lionel determines to become a genuine sleuth and find the killer. The ensuing plot twists are marked by clever wordplay, fast-paced dialog, and nonstop irony. The novel pays amusing homage to, and plays with the conventions of, classic hard-boiled detective tales and movies while standing on its own as a convincing whole. The author has applied his trademark genre-bending style to fine effect. Already well known among critics for his literary gifts, Lethem should gain a wider readership with this appealing book's debut.

...[A] jaunty and readable account of artistic friendship and collaboration in Manhattan in the 1950s and early '60s....[The author] has a spirited story to tell, and he tells it with spirit.
— The New York Times Book Review

Such is the infectious style of Jonathan Lethem's wonderfully inventive, slightly absurdist novel, a detective story whose hero has Tourette's syndrome. The neurological condition causes Lionel Essrog to have "tics" – to bark and to tap people and to spew streams of incongruous language, like James Joyce on speed. Wordplay and interjection drive the novel; it is funny and sly, clever, compelling and endearing.
—USA Today

The Human Freakshow might not get the girl. He might not tie up all the loose ends. He might not even bring all the bad guys to justice. All that he — and Lethem — does is triumph.
— Esquire

A tour de force.

Part detective novel and part literary fantasia…Superbly balances beautiful writing and an engrossing plot.

Jonathan Lethem is one of the most original voices among younger American novelists…His imagination [is] marvelously fertile.

Jonathan Lethem's verbal exuberance and inventive renovations of tired forms make for compulsively readable novels and stories…(Lethem's) at home in his native Brooklyn to take on the hard-boiled detective novel, turning it inside out and then presenting it as if it were freshly stamped off the Spillane boilerplate.
—Bookforum

Motherless Brooklyn, is, among other things, a tale of orphans, a satire of Zen in the city and a murder mystery
— Time Out: New York

A brilliantly imagined riff on the classic detective tale: the fifth high-energy novel in five years from the rapidly maturing prodigy whose bizarre black-comic fiction includes, most recently, Girl in Landscape (1998). Lethem's delirious yarn about crime, pursuit, and punishment, is narrated in a unique voice by its embattled protagonist, Brooklynite (and orphan) Lionel Essrog, a.k.a. "Freakshow." Lionel's moniker denotes the Tourette's syndrome that twists his speech into weird aslant approximations (his own name, for example, is apt to come out "Larval Pushbug" or "Unreliable Chessgrub") and induces a tendency to compulsive behavior ("reaching, tapping, grabbing and kissing urges") that makes him useful putty in the hands of Frank Minna, an enterprising hood who recruits teenagers (like Lionel) from St. Vincent's Home for Boys, to move stolen goods and otherwise function as apprentice-criminal "Minna Men." The daft plot—which disappears for a while somewhere around the middle of the novel—concerns Minna's murder and Lionel's crazily courageous search for the killer, an odyssey that brings him into increasingly dangerous contact with two elderly Italian men ("The Clients") who have previously employed the Minna Men and now pointedly advise Lionel to abandon his quest; Frank's not-quite-bereaved widow Julia (a tough-talking dame who seems to have dropped in from a Raymond Chandler novel) at the Zendo, a dilapidated commune where meditation and other Buddhist techniques are taught; a menacing "Polish giant"; and, on Maine's Muscongus Island, a lobster pound and Japanese restaurant that front for a sinister Oriental conglomerate. The resulting complications arehilariously enhanced by Lionel's "verbal Tourette's flowering"—a barrage of sheer rhetorical invention that has tour de force written all over it; it's an amazing stunt, and, just when you think the well is running dry, Lethem keeps on topping himself. Another terrific entertainment from Lethem, one of contemporary fiction's most inspired risk-takers. Don't miss this one.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award  • A New York Times Notable Book

"The best novel of the year. . . . Utterly original and deeply moving." —Esquire

"Philip Marlowe would blush. And tip his fedora." —Newsweek

"Finding out whodunit is interesting enough, but it's more fun watching Lethem unravel the mysteries of his Tourettic creation. In this case, it takes one trenchant wordsmith to know another." —Time

"Immerses us in the mind's dense thicket, a place where words split and twine in an ever-deepening tangle." —The New York Times Book Review

"Who but Jonathan Lethem would attempt a half-satirical cross between a literary novel and a hard-boiled crime story narrated by an amateur detective with Tourette's syndrome?...The dialogue crackles with caustic hilarity...Jonathan Lethem is a verbal performance artisit...Unexpectedly moving." —The Boston Globe

"With one unique and well-imagined character, Jonathan Lethem has turned a genre on its ear. He doesn't just push the envelope, he gives it a swift kick... A tour de force." —The Denver Post

"Wonderfully inventive, slightly absurdist... [Motherless Brooklyn] is funny and sly, clever, compelling, and endearing." —USA Today