Motherless Brooklyn: A Novel

By Jonathan Lethem
1999
320 pages / 10 hours and 9 minutes
Fiction

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The New York City novel is virtually its own literary category, with the Brooklyn novel as a distinct subcategory. I freely admit that I find this obsession particularly tiresome. Those of us who don’t live in the city find it hard to understand why it winds up being the subject of so many books. But honesty requires me to say that a number of those novels are quite good.

Of the current Brooklyn novelists, Jonathan Lethem will be near the top of almost anyone’s list. I run a little hot and cold on Lethem. Part of it is undoubtedly my general resistance to the NYC novel. The first book of his that I read was the highly acclaimed, The Fortress of Solitude (2003). It is a melancholy and occasionally lovely piece of writing built around the name of Superman’s famous getaway, but it’s largely about Black and white relations in a Brooklyn that is mostly gone now. It is most likely to be the book that he will be known for. But the fact of the matter is, I don’t love it even though I think I am supposed to.

So let me break my own rules and stretch my time frame back before 2000 – all the way to 1999. This is the date of a truly great book by Letham that got fresh wind in its sails because of a recent movie version. I must hasten to say (this will surprise no one) that I haven’t seen the movie. Motherless Brooklyn won The National Book Critics Circle Award when it was published and holds up extraordinarily well after 20 years.

At the level of story, there is an intricately plotted and complicated detective story. Well, it might be a little less of a detective yarn and more of a gangster tale, because I assure you the gangsters are a lot more interesting than the police in this story. The plot is far too complex for me to try to summarize without giving away crucial points, but it doesn’t say much to tell you that a murder happens in the opening pages. And we are off and running.

But this isn’t why this book is famous. It is admired for its lead character. He is, for lack of a better term, a low-level henchman for a local gangster. How their relationship began and has been sustained is intriguing. But what makes this character unforgettable is that he has Tourette syndrome. That’s right. A gangster with Tourette’s. Which means, of course, he is going to be frequently misunderstood and constantly underestimated. He is going to become a character you’re going to root for as much as you ever have for any character in a novel. Many of the characters are unwholesome, so I offer a strong warning about the language and actions.

But Lethem does such an extraordinary job of taking us inside this unusual mind, that I am constantly amazed. And while it is an extraordinarily entertaining read it is also a call for us, individually and as a society, to try a little harder to understand and appreciate those in our midst whose minds work a little differently from our own. As you read the book you will laugh – sometimes in the same way you laugh when you’re watching Charlie Chaplin. But as with Chaplin, the primary emotion will not be amusement. You will be moved.