Motherless Brooklyn
Decide its fate
The record
Time
An eveningA season316 pages, about 6 hours: about the length of a typical book on the shelf.
Getting in
Walk right inSteep climbOne reviewer reports the momentum stalling in the fifty-page orphanage backstory that follows the book’s opening stakeout.
What it gives
Plot and actionIdeas to live byIn 18 reviews from critics and book blogs, 7 credit the plot and 9 credit the ideas or a change in how they live.
One of a kind
Others do thisNothing else doesThe Guardian’s 1999 review reads Lionel’s narration as Faulkner’s Benjy escaped on to the pages of Raymond Chandler.
The case for it
on the Brooklyn setting
“a telling portrait of Brooklyn that captures the place with an admirable accuracy of detail”
a book blog on Lionel’s tics
“he explores the relationship between what makes us tic and what makes us tick”
Brian Logan · The Guardian, 1999 on Lionel as detective
“Lionel nevertheless proves to be a capable detective”
a book blog on Essrog’s wordplay
“Essrog’s dialogue is constantly kaleidoscoping, a combination of word games, anagrams, and sheer gibberish”
Joshua Klein · The A.V. Club, 1999
The case against
on the plot
“which disappears for a while somewhere around the middle of the novel”
Kirkus Reviews, 1999 on the pace
“certainly slow the pace of the unraveling mystery”
Sarah Brennan · Bookreporter.com, 2000 on the Italian wiseguys
“I could have done without the stereotyped Italian wiseguys”
a book blog on the mystery plot
“Lethem’s actual plot is relatively predictable and slowly paced”
a book blog
