Items related to Motherless Brooklyn (Vintage Contemporaries)
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.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
Petty hoodlum turned owner of a small time detective agency, Frank Minna assembled a team of four orphans and made them his loyal servants: the Minna Men. When Frank is stabbed to death on what was supposed to be a routine job, Lionel, one of the four, is determined to track down Frank's killer and avenge his death. One thing makes this something of a problem--Lionel has Tourette's syndrome, a collection of tics and compulsions which make him constantly break out in nonsense syllables or cause him to touch every object he sees. His advantage is that most people confuse his disability with stupidity; when he gets up a head of steam, the large slow-moving Lionel is extremely formidable. Taking us from a Zen study centre to a dangerous car park on the New England coast, Motherless Brooklyn is at the same time a brilliantly characterised detective novel and an inventive exploration of a particular tone of voice.
Review:
"Meanwhile, beneath that frozen shell, a sea of language was reaching full boil. It became harder and harder not to notice that when a television pitchman said 'to last the rest of a lifetime' my brain went 'to rest the lust of a loaf tomb' that when I heard 'Alfred Hitchcock', I silently replied 'Altered House clock' or 'Ilford Hotchkiss'."
What might have been exploitative--the portrayal of Lionel and his compulsions--is attractive, affirming and compassionate. The sense of Brooklyn as a city full of borderlines between communities, the legal and the illegal, life and death, is overwhelming. --Roz Kaveney
"The best novel of the year. . . . Utterly original and deeply moving." --Esquire "Philip Marlowe would blush. And tip his fedora." --Newsweek "Finding out whodunit is interesting enough, but it's more fun watching Lethem unravel the mysteries of his Tourettic creation. In this case, it takes one trenchant wordsmith to know another." --Time "Immerses us in the mind's dense thicket, a place where words split and twine in an ever-deepening tangle." --The New York Times Book Review "Who but Jonathan Lethem would attempt a half-satirical cross between a literary novel and a hard-boiled crime story narrated by an amateur detective with Tourette's syndrome?...The dialogue crackles with caustic hilarity...Jonathan Lethem is a verbal performance artisit...Unexpectedly moving." --The Boston Globe "With one unique and well-imagined character, Jonathan Lethem has turned a genre on its ear. He doesn't just push the envelope, he gives it a swift kick... A tour de force." --The Denver Post "Wonderfully inventive, slightly absurdist... [Motherless Brooklyn] is funny and sly, clever, compelling, and endearing." --USA Today
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- PublisherVintage
- Publication date2000
- ISBN 10 0375724834
- ISBN 13 9780375724831
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages336
- Rating
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Book Description Softcover. Condition: New. NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER A complusively readable riff on the classic detective novel from America's most inventive novelist."A half-satirical cross between a literary novel and a hard-boiled crime story narrated by an amateur detective with Tourette's syndrome. The dialogue crackles with caustic hilarity. Unexpectedly moving." -The Boston GlobeBrooklyn'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. Seller Inventory # DADAX0375724834
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Motherless Brooklyn by Lethem, Jonathan [Paperback ]
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Vintage Books USA 10/24/2000
(2000)
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