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Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem
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Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.
A compelling and complusively readable riff on the classic detective novel from America's most inventive novelist.
Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, Lionel Essrog is 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, captivating homage to the classic detective novel by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation.
A New York Times Notable Book.
- Sales Rank: #59994 in Books
- Brand: PowerbookMedic
- Published on: 2000-10-24
- Released on: 2000-10-24
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.97" h x .70" w x 5.17" l, .54 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 311 pages
Features
Amazon.com Review
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
From Publishers Weekly
This entertaining play on the hard-boiled detective tale features an unlikely gumshoe with Tourette's syndrome, which compels him to count, tap and make strange vocalizations at inopportune moments. Such ticks could seem gimmicky, but Lethem writes it, and Buscemi performs it, with such style that the compulsions seem an endearing idiosyncrasy (though not to the Tourettic's cohorts, who call him "Freakshow"). Regretfully, it's hard to grasp Lethem's wordplay as it goes whizzing by--Buscemi enunciates at great speed to convey the frenetic activity inside the man's head. Lionel Essrog works with three other young men for Frank Minna's small-time detective agency ("Minna men," Lionel calls them) masquerading as a car service ("No cars!" the boys respond whenever the phone rings). Lionel was saved from an orphanage by Minna, so when his mentor is killed on a job, Lionel is devastated and determines to solve the crime. The chase takes him from a zendo on Manhattan's Upper East Side to a resort on the Maine coast as he follows a character he can identify only as "the giant." Buscemi convincingly conveys the accents of Japanese Zen masters and Brooklyn mobsters, along with Lionel's verbal acrobatics, all without losing the noirish ambience Lethem is gently riffing. Listeners may find themselves unable to turn off their Walkmen and put this one down. Based on the Doubleday hardcover (Forecasts, Aug. 16, 1999).
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
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 treatedAhis nickname is "Freakshow"ATourette'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. Recommended for most fiction collections.
-AStarr E. Smith, Marymount Univ. Lib., Arlington, VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Noir novel with unusual protagonist superbly done
By Alan A. Elsner
Lionel Essrog, the orphaned hero of this superb novel which evokes and in some ways surpasses the classics of Raymond Chandler, has Tourette's syndrome and suffers from compulsive traits that make him behave in a variety of strange ways. The author's brilliant evocation of his internal dialogues and the way in which his tic constantly manifests itself is totally convincing and lifts this book into a special category.
Lionel is regarded as a freak by almost everyone he meets. The exception is Frank Minna, a small-time crook running a series of modest rackets in Brooklyn, who rescues Lionel and three other inmates of his orphanage and enlists them as his "Minna Men," to do odd jobs and tasks for him. Minna runs a fake car service which is a front for a detective agency which itself is a front for various forms of larceny. But as the book begins, Minna is murdered.
Lionel's tics hide a sharp intelligence and a well-defined sense of right and wrong, which makes him the perfect hero. As he tries to get to the bottom of Minna's death, he finds that his behavior gives him a strange advantage. Nobody takes him seriously. But he is intensely serious.
Seen through Lionel's eyes, the world is a strange place. New York City itself, he says, is a "Tourettic city" with its constant scratching and counting and tearing. Lionel has the customary love affair during this book with a sweet girl who seems to understand him and then doesn't. Sex smooths away his tics, the author writes, then supplanting them with the biggest tic of all.
This is one of those books that takes a genre, shakes it up and goes beyond it without ever violating its fundamental rules. I believed totally in Essrog and came to see the world through his eyes.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Tell your story walking.
By HT
Very good. One of the joys of semi-retirement and commuting on the bus is the opportunity to read more and different things. My son recommended Jonathan Lethem so I took a look at his novels and picked this one because it won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction. I was intrigued after reading some reviews. The protagonist is a story tic-ridden, Tourettic underling who becomes a detective to solve the murder of his boss. I'm not a big detective genre reader (I've enjoyed some Elmore Leonard) and at first thought the premise seems too weird to work, but Jonathan Lethem comes through.
The first two sections describing how Lionel Essrog's boss Frank Minna met his demise and the reflection on how Minna gathered and honed his "Minna Men" from an orphan's home in Brooklyn was compelling reading. I can tell I have a good book when I feel the need to read past my normal bus stop; then I slow down my reading so I don't finish too soon; This book met those criteria.
Lethem does a very good job of describing his characters and describing their motivations, interactions, and dialog. His description of Brooklyn is also great. Lethem's description of Lionel eating some Uni and a bowl of lemongrass soup is worth the read in itself.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
A good read once you get into it
By WryGuy2
"Motherless Brooklyn", by author Jonathan Lethem, is a detective story with a twist ... the protagonist, Lionel Essrog, has Tourette's syndrome, a disorder with barely controllable physical tics and inadvertant vocal components, where the sufferer touches repeatedly things or imitates others, and may blurt out anything ... obscenities, secrets, or nonsense. Essrog is an orphan, who along with three other orphans, now work for Frank Minna, a small-time crook who employs them in a variety of legal and semi-legal endeavors. After Minna is murdered, Essrog searches to find Minna's killer. As I don't give plot spoilers (the above info is pretty much from the advertising blurbs and first chapter of the book), below are my impressions of the novel.
Essrog is the narrator of the story, and it's told from his perspective, in first person. For the first chapter or so, I was annoyed and discomfited by the structure and pacing of the narrative ... it was too "jerky" and disjointed, primarily because of the symptoms of Essrog's Tourette syndrome, but once I grew used to the pacing and flow, it largely ceased to bother me. Although afflicted by Tourette's syndrome, and appearing to others as somewhat less than sane or normal, there is nothing wrong with Essrog's powers of intellect, so you get a sense of someone peering keenly out from behind a damaged exterior.
While nominally a detective story (and a very good one at that), this is also somewhat of a character study, where the flawed Essrog lives among others who are damaged in other ways, and his struggles to find Minna's killer moves him beyond both his own comfort zone and involves him in complex situations where little is as it first appears. As it is difficult to fully develop many of the individuals within the context of a single novel, many are slight caricatures and stereotypes rather than thoroughly developed. But Essrog himself is tremendously appealing, and his disorder only adds to his humanity, and you find yourself rooting for him as the story progresses.
Overall, this is a very good novel, and once you get past its eccentricities, it will suck you in. This book would serve as a good basis for a series of sequels featuring Essrog and his friends, but given that "Motherless Brooklyn" was published in 1999 and there have been no reported efforts by the author toward a sequel, it isn't likely to ever happen. Four stars.
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