Lionel Essrog lives.
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Not a detective story in the conventional sense, Motherless Brooklyn is as much the story of Lionel Essrog as it is the story of a murder, and in this sense it is particularly appealing. Essrog is doubly removed from the mainstream--he has grown up in an orphanage without the kind of nurturing which gives humans their ability to empathize with each other, and he has Tourette's Syndrome, which makes him involuntarily touch and pat objects, count or repeat actions, and, most annoyingly for him, blurt out nonsense, rhymes, and sometimes obscenities at oftentimes inappropriate moments. He is not an easy character to identify with. Lionel is trying to find the murderer of Frank Minna, a somewhat shady character who has mentored Lionel and three others from the orphanage since they were young teenagers. He comes to believe that he may be the only one who cares enough about Frank to be able to solve his murder, and he begins to think that Frank counted on him to do this by the statements and actions he made in the moments immediately before and after he received his fatal wounds. As Lionel works to find Frank's killer, as he tries to attract a woman and sustain a relationship, and as he evaluates the relationships he has had with the other orphans, Lionel becomes more mature and more aware of his unusual relationships with the outside world. Jonathan Lethem, the author, does not use Lionel's Tourette's symptoms as a literary trick. He makes the reader care about Lionel without pitying him. His imaginative descriptions, especially those presented from Lionel's point of view, are often both humorous and uniquely offbeat, and his ability to keep the reader fascinated with this character and his story is dazzling. Mary Whipple
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Accurate, Heartbreaking and Funny
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Jonathan Lethem is a true original. His latest, "Motherless Brooklyn" manages to spin a tale of orphan misfits, detectives, gangsters and a main character that suffers from Tourette Syndrome into an impressive, rapid paced melee. The descriptions of the Brooklyn area, the characters and all the necessary sensory perceptions needed come through in snappy prose. Lethem's description of the 'impulses' and 'partly contollable' symptoms of Tourette are dead-on. Never has this reviewer read anything that so accurately captures the essence of Tourette and the personality in a novel. The reader can feel the symptoms of Tourette welling up in themselves as strongly as the character does on the page. Half detective story and half a case study of a young man with Tourette, Lethem intertwines the two deftly, giving the reader little time to breathe between events. The detective story may be slightly hackneyed and the closeness of the orphans and thier Fagan-like detective mentor could have been more intimately detailed, but Lionel Essrog and his Tourette's make fantastic fodder. Lethem goes for broke. This novel describes Tourette and real life on the streets like no other author has before.
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Brilliant, and oddly touching
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Lionel Essrog,'The Human Freakshow' is a sufferer from Tourette's Syndrome, and an unsuccessful driver and private detective with the Minna Agency in Brooklyn. When his employer, the nearest thing he has to a friend, is murdered, he has to reach deep within his confused head and become a real detective to catch the killer.
This is the opposite of Lethem's dreadful 'Amnesia Moon', a book that not only entertains but gives an insight into a totally different aspect of the human condition. A brilliant and affecting story from this strange, uneven writer.
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Brilliant
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Lethem's writing seems to be totally hit or miss for me: I loved "Gun, With Occasional Music," I hated "Amnesia Moon" and had similar reactions to stories in his collection "Wall of the Sky, Wall of the Eye." Fortunately, this falls on the love side of my Lethem fence. Lethem's protagonist, Lionel Essrog, was raised in an orphanage in Brooklyn and suffers from Tourette's syndrome. Since becoming a teenager he has been a "Minna Man," part of a group of orphans turned into wanna-be wiseguys operated by a low-level hood. Things get going with a bang as Minna is murdered right off the bat, leaving the four Minna Men to try and figure out what happened and if they can trust each other. The mystery isn't all that special in it's own right and the climax spins a little out of control-but Lethem's deft humanization of a Tourette's sufferer is brilliant and affecting, more than making up for any plot deficiencies. Lethem is a writer who fires off literary pyrotechnics which sometimes blow up in his face, fortunately here they light up the page in a most delightfully unexpected way.
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Tic to remember
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An extremely well written and enjoyable book. The plot is slightly weak but you can forgive Lethem when you read the characters and live Essrog's tourette's. A highly original premise for the book and I'd love to know where he got such knowledge for the character from. It's worth reading for the octopus joke alone.
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