Book review: Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem.
Simply put, this book is utterly brilliant. On one level, it is a fairly typical Marlowe-esque American crime novel. But there is a deeper side to it than that, a more emotional side. The principal character is an orphan and suffers from Tourette Syndrome – at first, the Tourettic ticcing appears humourous, and then is portrayed in a much more sensitive way, and becomes an intriguing plot device. As a reader, you begin to have some understanding of what it must be like to be a Tourette sufferer, the way that other people interact with sufferers, their perceptions of them.
Aside from those issues, the plot itself is fantastic – a total page-turner that makes the book very hard to put down, slowly revealed as our protagonist conducts his investigation, and not without one or two twists and surprises along the way.
Dedicated readers may recall that I have raved about Jonathan Lethem’s writing before. Well, I’m definitely on the look out for more of his writing now. He could easily be elevated to most-favoured author status.
separating the wanted from the unwanted