Product Description

The hero of this novel is one Lionel Essrog, otherwise known as the Human Freakshow. Essrog is a victim of Tourette's Syndrome; hapless and veering out of control, he fights himself and his disease.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21879 in Books
• Published on: 2004-07-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 311 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Petty hoodlum turned owner of a small time detective agency, Frank Minna assembled a team of four orphans and made them his loyal servants: the Minna Men. When Frank is stabbed to death on what was supposed to be a routine job, Lionel, one of the four, is determined to track down Frank's killer and avenge his death. One thing makes this something of a problem--Lionel has Tourette's syndrome, a collection of tics and compulsions which make him constantly break out in nonsense syllables or cause him to touch every object he sees. His advantage is that most people confuse his disability with stupidity; when he gets up a head of steam, the large slow-moving Lionel is extremely formidable. Taking us from a Zen study centre to a dangerous car park on the New England coast, Motherless Brooklyn is at the same time a brilliantly characterised detective novel and an inventive exploration of a particular tone of voice.

"Meanwhile, beneath that frozen shell, a sea of language was reaching full boil. It became harder and harder not to notice that when a television pitchman said 'to last the rest of a lifetime' my brain went 'to rest the lust of a loaf tomb' that when I heard 'Alfred Hitchcock', I silently replied 'Altered House clock' or 'Ilford Hotchkiss'."

What might have been exploitative--the portrayal of Lionel and his compulsions--is attractive, affirming and compassionate. The sense of Brooklyn as a city full of borderlines between communities, the legal and the illegal, life and death, is overwhelming. --Roz Kaveney

Sunday Times
'A detective novel of winning humour and exhilarating originality.'

Time Out
'Terrific.'

Customer Reviews

Exhilirating and Convincing Characters!
Jonathan Lethem is a true original. His latest, "Motherless Brooklyn" manages to spin a tale of orphan misfits, detectives, gangsters and a main character that suffers from Tourette Syndrome into an impressive, rapid paced melee. The descriptions of the Brooklyn area, the characters and all the necessary sensory perceptions needed come through in snappy prose. Lethem's description of the 'impulses' and 'partly contollable' symptoms of Tourette are dead-on. Never has this reviewer read anything that so accurately captures the essence of Tourette and the personality in a novel. The reader can feel the symptoms of Tourette welling up in themselves as strongly as the character does on the page.

Half detective story and half a case study of a young man with Tourette, Lethem intertwines the two deftly, giving the reader little time to breathe between events.

The detective story may be slightly hackneyed and the closeness of the orphans and thier Fagan-like detective mentor could have been more intimately detailed, but Lionel Essrog and his Tourette's make fantastic fodder. Lethem goes for broke. This novel describes Tourette and real life on the streets like no other author has before.

Accurate, Heartbreaking and Funny
Jonathan Lethem is a true original. His latest, "Motherless Brooklyn" manages to spin a tale of orphan misfits, detectives, gangsters and a main character that suffers from Tourette Syndrome into an impressive, rapid paced melee. The descriptions of the Brooklyn area, the characters and all the necessary sensory perceptions needed come through in snappy prose. Lethem's description of the 'impulses' and 'partly contollable' symptoms of Tourette are dead-on. Never has this reviewer read anything that so accurately captures the essence of Tourette and the personality in a novel. The reader can feel the symptoms of Tourette welling up in themselves as strongly as the character does on the page.

Half detective story and half a case study of a young man with Tourette, Lethem intertwines the two deftly, giving the reader little time to breathe between events.

The detective story may be slightly hackneyed and the closeness of the orphans and thier Fagan-like detective mentor could have been more intimately detailed, but Lionel Essrog and his Tourette's make fantastic fodder. Lethem goes for broke. This novel describes Tourette and real life on the streets like no other author has before.

Lionel Essrog lives.
Not a detective story in the conventional sense, Motherless Brooklyn is as much the story of Lionel Essrog as it is the story of a murder, and in this sense it is particularly appealing. Essrog is doubly removed from the mainstream--he has grown up in an orphanage without the kind of nurturing which gives humans their ability to empathize with each other, and he has Tourette's Syndrome, which makes him involuntarily touch and pat objects, count or repeat actions, and, most annoyingly for him, blurt out nonsense, rhymes, and sometimes obscenities at oftentimes inappropriate moments. He is not an easy character to identify with.

Lionel is trying to find the murderer of Frank Minna, a somewhat shady character who has mentored Lionel and three others from the orphanage since they were young teenagers. He comes to believe that he may be the only one who cares enough about Frank to be able to solve his murder, and he begins to think that Frank counted on him to do this by the statements and actions he made in the moments immediately before and after he received his fatal wounds. As Lionel works to find Frank's killer, as he tries to attract a woman and sustain a relationship, and as he evaluates the relationships he has had with the other orphans, Lionel becomes more mature and more aware of his unusual relationships with the outside world.

Jonathan Lethem, the author, does not use Lionel's Tourette's symptoms as a literary trick. He makes the reader care about Lionel without pitying him. His imaginative descriptions, especially those presented from Lionel's point of view, are often both humorous and uniquely offbeat, and his ability to keep the reader fascinated with this character and his story is dazzling. Mary Whipple