Motherless Brooklyn (novel)
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 | |
| Author | Jonathan Lethem |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Detective novel |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
Publication date | 1999 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 0-385-49183-2 |
| OCLC | 40723751 |
| 813.54 21 | |
| LC Class | PS3562.E8544 M68 1999 |
Motherless Brooklyn is a novel by Jonathan Lethem that was first published in 1999. Told in first person, the story follows Lionel Essrog, a private investigator who has Tourette's, a disorder marked by involuntary tics. Essrog works for Frank Minna, a small-time owner of a "seedy and makeshift" detective agency disguised as a transportation company. Together, Essrog and three other characters who are all orphans from Brooklyn—Tony, Danny, and Gilbert—call themselves "the Minna Men".[1] The novel was adapted into a 2019 film.
The novel won the 1999 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction[2] and the 2000 Gold Dagger award for crime fiction.[3]
Albert Mobilio of The New York Times wrote:
Under the guise of a detective novel, Lethem has written a more piercing tale of investigation, one revealing how the mind drives on its own "wheels within wheels." Unlike the stock detective novel it shadows, the thriller in which clarity emerges on the final page, Motherless Brooklyn immerses us in the mind's dense thicket, a place where words split and twine in an ever-deepening tangle.[4]
Gary Krist of Salon wrote:
Motherless Brooklyn has a few problems—including some cartoon-like stock characters and one scene near the end that flirts with maudlin sentimentality—but it works far better than the average hip postmodern novel in terms of sheer emotional impact. Because Lethem never lets the metaphorical and linguistic possibilities of his narrator's illness overshadow his immensely appealing humanity, we really care about Lionel and his search for his mentor's killer.[1]
