Motherless Brooklyn
If you enjoyed this review, please consider purchasing this book from my Amazon Associates link (applies to Kindle purchases as well): https://amzn.to/3wxuhMC. The commissions I receive from your purchase help pay for the costs of running this website. Thanks for your support!
Motherless Brooklyn caught me by surprise, because I was not on board for the first 50 pages. The narrator is Lionel Essrog, an orphan with Tourette syndrome who works for a low-level mobster in Brooklyn. The uniqueness of his speech and mind eventually won me over as a super unique way of writing, but it takes some warming up to.
Without spoiling anything, an incident leaves him disoriented and searching for answers. The incident itself is a bit hard to follow– a bunch of names and details are thrown out, and it’s hard to keep track or contextualize them (although it is pieced together nicely at the end). Part of the hard-to-followness is the Tourette’s angle, because the first-person narration is haphazard. So, the allure is also the source of confusion. The erratic nature of the writing is simultaneously enticing and frustrating. That dichotomy is reflective of Lionel himself, because Tourette’s is sometimes his idiosyncratic superpower and sometimes the source of his demise. His perspective on language and people’s mannerisms gives him an edge, but it also makes him stand out like a sore thumb, especially when he’s literally screaming in public.
Overall, this book intrigues me, and I respect that Jonathan Lethem carved out such a particular niche. Aside from the fact that I’ve never read a book with this kind of narrator, I also like that the novel centers around low-level mobsters. It’s not showing gratuitous glamor with seasoned, hard-boiled detectives wooing women with suave dialogue and nice suits. It’s not trying to be Philip Marlowe. It’s its own thing, and it does it well. It receives 4 out of 5 flames.
