The main character and narrator has Tourette's Syndrome and that fact totally dominates this book. It is a tour de force on that issue. Although I have no idea if the presentation here is accurate for what it feels like inside to suffer from Tourette's, it is both heartbreaking and hilarious to read Lethem's portrait of the processing. The underlying plot is also quite engaging and well written. ( )

I have a bias against books with a main character who is mentally impaired via alcohol, drugs or mental illness. It seems like a crutch to me, like the author doesn't have enough real stuff to deal with. But....with that in mind, we'll see how this goes.

A real twist on the hard-boiled genre. The narrator is tough case orphan from Brooklyn, under the wing of a small time wise guy. He has Tourette's, and Lethem takes all advantage he can as the narrator spends a couple of whirlwind days investigating the murder of his mentor. Of course, this being in the hard-boiled vein, it involves a couple of trips: into the past and down a road. Hilarious at times, intense, finally more than simply amusing. ( )

Four orphans in a school for boys are hired by Frank Minna, a small-time hood, to do odd (sometimes very odd) jobs. Frank becomes a father figure for them, imparting his Italian Brooklyn words of street-wise wisdom. But Frank never reveals the truth about his life and "The Minna Men" are left reeling when Frank is mortally wounded and won't divulge the name of his killer. Lionel Essrog tells the story, complete with the physical and verbal tics of Tourette Syndrome, as he tracks down Frank's killer. Lionel's condition is hilarious in its context (an amateur detective with no skills and fewer resources navigating the worlds of organized and corporate crime) but Lethem portrays Lionel with great sympathy and respect. The reader gets the rare opportunity to navigate a mind riddled by compulsions and obsessions, always threatening to explode in a flurry of words and gestures. ( )

Imagine a personality with Tourette's combined with compulsive touching and counting, surrounded in an environment of Brooklyn speak and Mafia threats. This combination makes for some hilarious conversational interchanges in this book. Is it a murder mystery? A noir thriller? A stylistic tour de force? Yes! Jonathan Lethem has created an unforgettable character in loyal, sweet-natured, Tourette’s-afflicted Lionel Essrog. This sometimes hilarious and always absurd story takes us in and around Brooklyn and into the unfamiliar point of view of a man with Tourette’s syndrome. The result is a little like The Sopranos: surprisingly lyrical, complexly masculine, and toughly tender.

Lethem received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2000 Gold Dagger award for crime fiction for Motherless Brooklyn. In 2005 it was announced that Edward Norton would direct, adapt, and star in a film adaptation, set in the 1950s. The movie will be released in 2009.

The entertainment value of this book is not in the plain vanilla mystery plot, but rather in the skillful descriptive writing. The most intriguing focus of the book for me was the exploration of the inner workings of the Tourette's mind. The first person description of the Tourette's experience is so vivid I can't help but believe it has some validity. Below are some example quotations from the book.

"Tourette's is just one big lifetime of tag, really. The world (or my brain---same thing) appoints me it, again and again. So I tag back. Can it do otherwise? If you've ever been it you know the answer."

"Me, I became a walking joke, preposterous, improbable, unseeable. My outbursts, utterances and tappings were white noise or static, irritating but tolerated, and finally boring unless they happened to provoke a response from some unsavvy adult, a new or substitute teacher."

"... all I do is compress and release, over and over, never saving or satisfying anyone, least myself. Yet the tape plays on ..."

Here's a quote from Lionel, the book's protagionist, explaining why he doesn't look (or act) like a detective:
" "Maybe you're thinking of detectives in movies or on television." I was a fine one to be explaining this distinction. "On TV they're all the same. Real detectives are as unalike as fingerprints, or snowflakes." "

This is an example of a book that I believe is more entertaining listened to as an audio book rather than read. In the audio format the Tourette's ticks are jerky outbursts much closer to the real thing than anything that my mind is able to conger up. At least for me, when I read the written words that are part of the Tourette's ticks they're just nonsense words to be skimmed over. Also, the Brooklyn accents come through in the audio format in a way that my mind can't duplicate. ( )