Absolute genius. ( )

One of my all-time favorite books. Tourrettic--wonderful, terrible, beautiful, horrid, mesmerizing.... ( )

So you have an orphan with Tourette's Syndrome, not understanding his affliction and being bullied in school. He meets, with 3 other orphans, Frank Minna, a man who takes them under his wing and has them move furniture and things for him.

Over time, they become a team and become known as Minna's Men and under the guise of a car rental service, they become a detective agency, or so they are led to believe by Frank, and learn how to conduct stake-outs, follow strangers and drive without asking questions.

Frank is murdered while Lionel and Gilbert are providing surveillance for him on a property. There are sufficient twists and turns following Lionel's attempt to uncover the murderer of his mentor and friend, Frank Minna, to make this a worthy read.

What I found more interesting was following the mind of a man with Tourette's Syndrome (he finally learns that he has a disability) and the verbal and physical compulsions that he's forced to express, try to harness and endure. ( )

What makes this novel so enjoyable is not the rather convoluted noir-style detective story forming the plot, but the uniqueness of its main character: a small-time criminal turned detective who has Tourette’s syndrome. Lionel Essrog doesn’t let loose with a stream of profanities every other sentence, though. His Tourette’s takes the form of nonsense words, tics and other compulsive gestures, and because he is telling the story, the narrative takes on the disjointedness and strange logic of Tourette’s. This unusual approach breathes life into a tired genre and gives the old private dick story a skewed, new aspect. ( )

Part cozy mystery, part noir, part bildungsroman, part experiment in the metes and bounds of the English language, Lethem's bizarre, hypnotic, lyrical Motherless Brooklyn is fun to read and hard to put down. Lionel Essrog, an already strange boy who suffers from Tourette's syndrome and who can't stop touching, talking, tapping, dialing, or organizing, navigates the crazy language that dominates the inside of his head, and tries to understand the chain of events that led to the murder of his boss, an event that dominates everything else. In many ways Lionel is the most probable of the improbable characters who inhabit Lethem's dreamlike, bell-toned Brooklyn; certainly he is the most relatably human, compulsions notwithstanding. As he chases down the hidden details of the story he's unwittingly become a part of, he becomes a familiar, comforting presence, and an unlikely point of sanity and logic in an increasingly fake, incomprehensible world. The story is hilarious and compelling, and really fun to read. It was recommended to me by a writing teacher, and while it's not the kind of book I'd usually pick up without a recommendation, I really enjoyed it, and if you enjoy well-crafted mysteries and writers who like to play with language - and Lethem really does play, in every sense of the word, twisting and turning English into something unrecognizable and yet recognizable at the same time - I think you'll like it too. ( )

An addicting mystery from the perspective of a Tourretic detective; Letham is a new favorite author, and his raw writing style is as compulsive as the main character himself. ( )

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. ( )

Lionel is a young orphan with Tourettes. Yet his boss Frank sees something in him worth cultivating unlike many others in Brooklyn who don't take him seriously. When Frank is murdered, Lionel vows to find out whodunnit. This is Lionel's story of how he found Frank, (or Frank found him) and his work to solve the crime - all seen through the body of someone with Tourettes, constantly ticcing and having other compulsive behaviours.

There's something romantic about Brooklyn in books that gives me more of a sense of a real neighbourhood than Manhattan, it's somewhere to live, wheel and deal, and get on with life, you feel at home there. It's also a place where an outsider like Lionel - who would be considered totally crazy elsewhere, can fit right in as part of Frank's work family. So when Frank is killed, Lionel loses his surrogate father and as he progresses in his quest to solve the murder he has to finish his growing up fast.

For three quarters of the novel, the detective story is really secondary to Lionel's life story. In the last quarter as everything falls into place to allow him to solve the crime, it does rather rush to its conclusion - but what crime novel doesn't do that?

This is an immensely readable and extremely enjoyable New York novel with a loveable and quirky main character. ( )

This is a really good use of language, with Lionel Essrog, the narrater of the story, having tourettes syndrome. Essrog is a detective and he works for a mobster, Frank Minna, who gets murdered. Lionel tries to find out who murders him.

The language is very much "Brooklyn" and you can picture the characters - always a sign of a good book in my opinion. Lionel is funny, sometimes unintentionally, with his outbursts and strange words.

From what I recall (it's some years since I read this book and it is due for a re-read!) the book slowed somewhat towards the end, but it is well worth reading.

Eatme. ( )

Motherless Brooklyn is the story of a man, Lionel Essrog, who suffers from a severe form of Tourette's Syndrome who is trying to solve the murder of his mentor, Frank Minna. Though he is not officially a detective, he follows the clues, interviews the suspects, chases people, and so on.

That is the core of the book, but most of the book deals with Lionel's living with his Tourette's, which makes him bark, curse, manipulate words, and compulsively touch things. Motherless Brooklyn is also, in part, about people learning to live Lionel's Tourette's, too. This extends to the reader, as well, I think. Throughout the book, I kept asking myself, do I ignore it? Can I laugh? How would I react to a person with Tourette's if I met them outside of a book?

This book is wonderfully written. Lethem can be sensitive and sweet one moment and then ruthless and fierce the next. Like Jeffrey Eugenides' , this book is multi-tonal. It's a fast read, too. Nothing in this book dragged it down.

There is a problem with the end of the book, though I can't quite put my finger on it. I've read this book twice, but the ending still seems compressed, with things coming together too quickly. Sure, you figure everything out, but I think Lethem could have let it unfold more slowly. I think it might be an attempt at real world pacing, but it just feels wrong. If you don't pay close attention to the last few chapters, you will miss things.

A fine entertainment. Flirts with some deeper meanings, especially surrounding language and perception, the role of language in creating reality, identity, etc.--but ultimately decides to be a relatively straightforward detective story of a sort. Never annoying, occasionally brilliant, consistently and thoroughly entertaining, often gripping--a fine work of entertainment with a thin edge of serious meaning, of deeper themes. It's biggest drawback: it doesn't tell us anything new, about the world or ourselves. It doesn't surprise us, either about other people or ourselves.

** Spoiler Alert **
In some ways, it's the oldest story in the book: Cain and Abel in 20th C. Brooklyn. But it doesn't play out that way; it's all about the bit-players, the side-kicks, Cain's and Abel's respective crews. Maybe for that reason it feels lacking in the end, like it's missing the central epiphany at its core that should be driving it, so that it's only a story well-told, but with nothing much of importance to say. ( )

A detective with Tourette syndrome attempts to find the killer of his boss. Some comic touches, but very poignant. I love Lionel! Had tears in my eyes at the end. Eat me baily. ( )

I don't think it's very controversial to call this book a modern classic, or to rave about Lethem's ability to write a detective story that both fans and detractors of genre fiction can enjoy. So I don't have much new to say about this excellent and very fun-to-read book.

I do want to mention the almost physiological effect that Lionel's tics (described in writing) had on me. I'm a pretty fidgety and flinchy person by nature, so the stream of consciousness description of his Tourette's symptoms, starting with stimulus - a word, a sound, a gesture - and then resulting in a flood of repetitions and permutations that eventually overflow Lionel's brain and burst out into his actions, really got me going. Any time I put the book down and stood up to walk across my apartment, I had to fight the urge to shout out 'Eatmebailey!' ( )

As absurd as the summary of the book might sound, this mystery is fabulously written and engaging from the beginning. The characters will draw you in, particularly the narrator, and you'll find yourself frowning and laughing outloud along with the story, as well as cringing at various points of embarassment. If you're interested in mysteries, out of the ordinary stories, or enjoy getting lost in a good story and characters regardless, I'd recommend this book. It's one that will leave you searching out other works by the author. ( )

A wonderful book. Insightful view of Tourette's syndrome. ( )

Bizarre and hilarious novel about a grown orphan with Tourrette’s Syndrome who fancies himself a private detective. An amazing depiction of what it’s like to live with the disease, the main character is tortured and at the mercy of his peculiar affliction.
Not to sound like a cheesy movie reviewer, but it is laugh-out-loud funny (it is also a “triumph” a “romp” and all the other canned, cliché words put to movies).

Clever and often amusing insight into the Tourettic mind. ( )

Strange characters but still a decent read. ( )

Great story, well written. Very enjoyable. ( )

http://www.jonathanlethem.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan... ( )

Not sure how much I like Lethem's writing. Interesting character reveals a study of Tourette's Syndrome, however, the story didn't hold together for me and became rambling and was ultimately unsatisfying. ( )