September 22, 2023 | Rome, Italy

Motherless Brooklyn

By |2018-03-21T18:27:48+01:00November 1st, 2004|Recent Reviews|

By Jonathan Lethem

Faber and Faber, 2000. 311 pages.

I

magine a small-time hood/detective with Tourette’s. That’s just the beginning, and what follows is just as surprising. Imagine a grown-up orphan working in a car service, which fronts for a detective agency, which fronts for a fencing service to a very dangerous criminal organization.

Add a Zen meditation center, a silent Pole of gigantic proportions, and a group of four orphaned men whose hero is the two bit shyster who picked them up when they were just kids and gave them a sense of belonging. Now you’ve got a great story told with insight and true wit. The language alone would make this worth reading.

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