Well, shoot.  Despite the many 4 and 5 star reviews from my GR buddies, I failed to get a grip with this one.  At first the ticcing, touching, tapping, mirroring, and counting by Lionel Essrog (aka Freakshow) was entertaining and funny.  But soon, it became tiresome and repetitive to me.  And then I felt bad, because I could make it stop it by putting the book aside, a resolution that was not available to  Lionel.  There is some clever writing in here, and a scene set in a Japanese restaurant th...

What is it about Brooklyn? A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Joe Pitt in Half the Blood of Brooklyn. Last Exit to Brooklyn. Not to mention a hundred different movies. Something there must spark the imagination, get at the essence of life.Motherless Brooklyn is one of the most solidly crafted books I've read this year. 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. Really, it was just so pleasant to trust in Lethem, with page after pag...

I used to have a customer with Tourette’s. Back when I was a teenage supermarket teller, a million and a half years ago, she used to come through my line routinely. At the time, I didn’t reflect much on her condition other than that I assumed it must be tough for her occasionally, but how tough it really was I considered only in the vaguest sense, to the extent that I considered it at all. (Sorry, lady, but I was 17 and had a whole slew of 17 year-old thoughts to preoccupy myself with.) She seem...

I read this 'often hilarious'-[one-of-a-kind]-novel many years ago --The main character has Tourette's syndrome. I must have read this about 10 years ago. I've yet to read another novel (crime-satire-whodunit-to boot), with a story centered around 'Tourette's syndrome. No other author wanted to go toe-to-toe with, Jonathan Lethem, huh? "Eat S*it"... "go F#*+K yourself" ...."Thehorrorthehorror" .....and "Icouldabeenacontender!" is endearing in the most pure *Zen-in-the city*! Wonderful reviews he...

“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.” ― Jonathan Lethem, Motherless BrooklynA kinda egg-sandwich surprise, hardboilded detective novel. I'm still a bit unsure of what exactly was all tossed in (is that lemongrass?). Zen masters? Check. Tourette's? Check. Man-crushes and awkward touches? Check check. Prince (or the Artist Formerly Kn...

Have you read Motherless Brooklyn yet? If not, what are you waiting for? I mean, sure, the idea of an orphaned private detective with Tourette's Syndrome sounded a little strange to me too, possibly even depressing, but as it turns out this novel is anything but depressing. It's hilarious! And exciting! The book begins with a car chase, which is exactly the sort of thing that seems like a terrible idea to me, but I was riveted and that feeling didn't let up. The aforementioned orphaned detective...

There are more laugh out loud moments in this novel than in anything I’ve read for ages. Lionel, the orphaned aspiring detective with Tourettes is an adorable character. (Lethem helps us understand that we all have Tourettes to some extent: "Insomnia is a variant of Tourette's--the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has turned away, touching it everywhere, refusing to settle, to join the collective nod. The insomniac brain is a sort of conspiracy theorist as well, believing t...

Maybe I've just been lucky picking out some incredible books lately, but I feel like a lot of them are "my new favorite", or "one of the best I've read this year", but I really have to say it again for Motherless Brooklyn. Lethem's writing style had me from the beginning, and the story, being told from the perspective of Lionel Essrog, a man with Tourette's Syndrome was fascinating. It reads like a mystery/detective novel, but really, it's so much more than that.Also, it was just one of those bo...

Lethem is a master at hip, funny, serious, genre mash-up fiction, and this (IMHO) is his best so far. It's a soft-hearted, hard-boiled, Zen-infused, satirical noir, narrated by a small-time detective with Tourette's. Thankfully this doesn't come across as gimmicky, which it would in less capable hands. The narrator, Lionel Essrog (now there's a Pynchonesque name), uses his condition to think about, well, language itself, as his outbursts often riff on what they're supposed to convey. Sure, the p...

My favourite novel of the year.Lionel Essrog is a loveable orphan who has Tourette's. He and three of his fellow orphans are taken under the wing of Frank Minna, a small-time hustler with mob connections. Lionel hero worships the sharply dressed smooth talking Frank. Eventually Frank sets up a detective agency but something very bad happens to him and Lionel has to discover who did it. This is a novel that ticks all the boxes. It's full of suspense, rife with great plot twists, fabulously writt...

The Manic Choreography of a Motherless Brooklyn BoyIn 1979, Frank Minna plucked Lionel Essrog and three fellow orphans from St Vincent's Home for Boys in downtown Brooklyn, and fashioned them all into a workforce for a car service business and then a private detective agency. They call themselves the Minna Men.Lionel has Tourette's syndrome. His tics include a kind of word association that is, at times, either amusing or insightful. This is how Lionel explains it: “Though I collected words...

“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. This or that runs deep or true to form, is invariable, exemplary. Oh sure. Seen it before, will see it again. Trust me on this one. Assertions and generalizations are, of course, a version of Tourette’s. A way of touching the world, handling it, covering it with confirming language.”This was a very...

Ziggedy Zendoodah!This rip-roaring take on the classic detective story features an unlikely hero, a gumshoe with Tourette's syndrome, Lionel Essrog, AKA - 'The Human Freakshow', an intellectually sensitive type, with a bad case of Tourette's. Bristling with odd habits and compulsions, his mind continuously revolting against him in lurid outbursts of strange verbiage. He is compelled to snap, count, bark, grunt, tap and make strange Vocalizations at inopportune moments, sometimes even with a gun

Frank Minna was a small fish in a big city pond full of piranhas and scum. He was nimble, though; good with angles. His best move was when he recruited four young guys from the local orphanage, before they were old enough to shave, to be errand boys. These young bucks were eager, loyal assistants that somebody dubbed Motherless Brooklyn. Frank treated them to bigger boy delights like twenty dollar bills and bottles of beer for their efforts, and they just stayed on staff as they got older and mo...

Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/3.5 StarsMotherless Brooklyn is told from Lionel Essrog’s perspective. An orphan residing in the St. Vincent’s Home for Boys in Brooklyn, Essrog and a handful of others ranging from 13-15 are picked up by local hood Frank Minna as day workers for his local “delivery company.” Fast-forward 15 years and those same boys are assistants for Minna’s “detective agency” . . . . . and Minna is dead. What follows is Lionel’s attempt to discover

Video-review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-uWL...#3 in my Top 20 Books I Read in 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIWkw...Long story short: possibly the best detective novel ever written, certainly one of the best novels of the last twenty years. A beautifully orchestrated hard-boliled story that smells of pavement, incense and White Castle burgers, one that manages to be mercilessly real, breath-takingly beautiful and deeply deeply emotional. And don't make me start on the narrator be...

“Prince's music calmed me as much as masturbation or a cheeseburger.” Lionel Essrog, protagonist in Lethem's Motherless BrooklynLethem's 1999 literary detective novel set in Brooklyn was a fun read, much more layered and satisfying than the hard-boiled detective novels. The protagonist Lionel Essrog grew up an orphan and was nicknamed "The Human Freakshow" due to his Tourette syndrome. In lesser hands, these verbal tics could have turned gimmicky, but here Lethem fully develops Essrog and makes

3.5 StarsWhat a unique interpretation of a mystery novel featuring an amateur detective with Tourettes. Lionel Essorg grew up in St Vincent's Home for orphans and quickly gets in with a group of Italian guys, with Frank Minna playing the father figure. Frank has a car service company and a secret detective agency within. Frank unexpectedly gets stabbed and that leaves the misfit pack of orphans to figure out what happened. Lionel is such a well drawn character, and one you want to root for. I tr...

I'd always planned on really loving this book, not sure why or how that started but it was probably when Fortress of Solitude came out and I really loved that (really loved the first half, anyway) and a bunch of people told me Motherless Brooklyn was even better. It sounded like something I'd like a lot, so I've tried every few years since then but could never make it in past the beginning. This time, though, I did, and read the whole thing pretty quickly and without too much groaning or whining...