This was a very tightly crafted mystery, with a lot of soul, and a wonderful resolution. A way of touching the world, handling it, covering it with confirming language.” Trust me on this one.Īssertions and generalizations are, of course, a version of Tourette’s. This or that runs deep or true to form, is invariable, exemplary. “In detective stories things are always always, the detective casting his exhausted, caustic gaze over the corrupted permanence of everything and thrilling you with his sweetly savage generalizations. I'll have to check out The Fortress of Solitude, also by Letham, when I can handle some straight-up lit-fic.įour and a half- EatmeBailey-tics, rounding up Reminds me of Sara Gran's Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, and that's high praise indeed. Might even be worth adding to my own library. I feel like there's also solid re-read potential here. Unlike mystery-thrillers, it isn't a particularly teeth-clenching, anxiety-producing kind of book (except, perhaps, on behalf of Lionel) that requires one to stay up late to read 'one more page.' Yet there's something quite solid about it, curious, moving, wry and intriguing that let me immerse myself whenever I picked it up. We were all four of us an arrangement around a missing centerpiece, as incoherent as a verbless sentence."
The sandwich on top of the fridge wore his bite marks.
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"The ashtray on the counter was full of cigarette butts that had been in Minna’s fingers, the telephone log full of his handwriting from earlier in the day. At one point, I realized with some surprised that I was reading a solid literary-fiction kind of book, with beautiful writing and human drama, wrapped up in a mystery. It ends up being a bit of a bromance, or a non-jerk example of the 'dick-fic' genre (see The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death). The mobster, in turn, gets much of his own portrayal, at least from Lionel's viewpoint. But wrapped up in the mystery is a solid, thoughtful portrayal of man who was given the closest thing to family and companionship he ever knew by a low-level mobster. I went in expecting a mystery, and Lethem delivers, certainly. This is what passed for cool around here." Gilbert’s hands gripped the wheel, mine drummed quietly in my lap, tiny hummingbird motions. "My jaw worked, chewing the words back down, keeping silent. I was afraid it would always be played for laughs, or worse yet, for pity, but Lethem has a nice balance between the internal thoughts and the external expression that allows for the occasional laughs with him instead of at him. Communication is, of course, a challenge for Lionel. He's an observant and humorous narrator, and if he is occasionally led around by his id, he's aware enough to understand it. Lionel is a likable hero, Tourette's and all, driven to explain and organize around him. Here on the Upper East Side we were off our customary map, Automobile and Terrier in Candyland-or maybe in the study with Colonel Mustard." "Together made a crisscrossed game board of Frank Minna’s alliances and enmities, and me and Gil Coney and the other Agency Men were the markers-like Monopoly pieces, I sometimes thought, tin automobiles or terriers (not top hats, surely)-to be moved around that game board. Things go terribly wrong, and the relationships within Minna's Men become fragile and uncertain. Lionel and Gerald are supposed to be back-up support for Frank at a meeting. Since his teens, Lionel has worked as a small-time muscle for mentor and eventual friend Frank Minna. This is a homicide, a mystery which our protagonist, Lionel, feels compelled to solve. "My mouth won’t quit, though mostly I whisper or subvocalize like I’m reading aloud, my Adam’s apple bobbing, jaw muscle beating like a miniature heart under my cheek, the noise suppressed, the words escaping silently, mere ghosts of themselves, husks empty of breath and tone."īut a man with Tourette's is not really what this is about, not really. It's handled with aplomb, with sensitivity, with humor with an even hand that gives expression to the experience. I was distrustful at first, I admit the protagonist has a serious case of Tourette's Syndrome whiched seemed like an Authorial Big Idea that could go awfully wrong. Really, it was just so pleasant to trust in Lethem, with page after page doing fascinating things. Since it's the end of February that may not sound like much, so I'll throw in December and November of 2017 as well.
Motherless Brooklyn is one of the most solidly crafted books I've read this year. Something there must spark the imagination, get at the essence of life. Not to mention a hundred different movies. What is it about Brooklyn? A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
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