Review: Motherless Brooklyn
Posted by james m. toburen in Book Reviews
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked up this novel; now that I think about it, I’m not really sure how this book ended up in my hands in the first place, perhaps the gold sigil of the National Book Critics Circle Award on the cover. However it came to be, I was delighted to find a powerfully compelling read.
Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn
invites us to spend a day (or three) in the shoes (and head) of Lionel Essrog, a sorta-detective/thug with Tourette’s; in the first few pages, we find Lionel’s boss brutally and inexplicably murdered. Lionel is attempting to track down the parties responsible, even if he isn’t certain what he’s diving into, or what he’ll do if he manages to discover the truth of the mysterious death. But if you’re expecting a hard-boiled who-dun-it or a murder-mystery-thriller, this is where things are going to veer sharply into the unexpected. Sure, there’s a bizarre assortment of characters and locations, some more believable than others–that’s noir, I suppose–but this story is less about tracking down the bad guy than what it’s like to live in the head of Lionel Essrog, tugged back and forth by the unexplainable surges of his Tourette’s, and the novel delivers this in buckets. I was so consumed by the telling of Lionel’s personal story, by the rapid patter of words and tics and urges that is life with Tourette’s, that I found I didn’t really care that the ending wasn’t tremendously satisfying; in a way, it seemed an appropriate denouement for the character’s harried, nervous existence. I recommend this novel with hardly any reservation (if you’re looking for the more average sort of murder mystery, this is really not the book for you) and if you’re going to take the time to read Motherless Brooklyn, I advise reading at least a portion of it aloud to fully appreciate the never-ending stream of babble that is Lionel Essrog’s thoughts.
Plot: 7
Characters: 8.5
Action: 8
Writing: 9
Overall (not an average): 8/10
