Motherless Brooklyn

By: Jonathan Lethem

Narrated by: Geoffrey Cantor

Now a major motion picture from Warner Bros. Starring Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, and Willem Dafoe

From America's most inventive novelist, Jonathan Lethem, comes this compelling and compulsive riff on the classic detective novel.

Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable.

When Frank is fatally stabbed, Lionel's world is suddenly turned upside down, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case, while trying to keep the words straight in his head.

A compulsively involving a and totally captivating homage to the classic detective tale.

©1999 Jonathan Lethem (P)2014 HarperCollinsPublishers

Top notch audiobook: novel and performance both A+

Thrilling chandleresque detective story, except the hardboiled narrator is a sensitive Brooklyn misfit with Tourette's.

Reading performance is really good.

I wish there were a sequel!

This is my first Lethem novel. I’m happy to see he has written many more. I hope I will find characters as engaging as Lionel, with narrators as brilliant as Cantor. But for now, I’m going to listen to Motherless Brooklyn again!

Good detective story.

Wasn't so sure be at first, but it gradually lured me in. Thanks, Bailey! Hah!

It was nothing like the movie

I should be cautious of movies that are "based" on books. The book was great, the movie was great - they were just totally different!! The only connection was that the main character was autistic. If a book is on the best seller list, why don't they follow the story in the book????

overall, a winner

Great prose, a compelling listen, enjoyable characters, great and relatable relatio ships. Felt the actual detecting was a bit underbaked, but maybe that's not the point. Overall very enjoyable.

Simply great.

Wonderful wordplay & classic detective, movie TV references along with a good story. Funny & serious. Lethem is great & I plan to check out other work. Gun With Occasional Music is another of his great “detective” novels but with an SF twist.

Egg-sandwich surprise, hardboilded detective novel

A kinda egg-sandwich surprise, hardboilded detective novel. I'm still a bit unsure of what exactly was all tossed in (is that lemongrass?). Zen masters? Check. Tourette's? Check. Man-crushes and awkward touches? Check check. Prince (or the Artist Formerly Known AS Prince)? Also, check check checkaramadingdong.

Look fair weather readers, I like Lethem (see four stars?...I couldn't stop at three), just like I like Chabon. Actually, almost exactly like I like Chabon. There is a certain dance, jig, and Brooklyn-hipster style to both their writing, complete with their shared fetishes (comic books, vinyl chairs, bad hair, crappy cars, carnival food, odd screwballs). They seem to be barycentric binaries or orbs orbiting the same point in space; two vultures circling the same diseased zip code of literary space-time. So, yes, I enjoyed it. But also felt like I was robbed a bit, like a bit of the potential for this novel got skimmed off into some dark, back-room, and I was left holding less than a royal flush. I was treated to a comic when I wanted a novel, a girl when I wanted a woman, a joke when I wanted a koan.

One of the best audiobook performances I have hear

I saw the trailer for the movie and then I found out it was a novel first. So, I read the synopsis and I thought I might like it. I didn't just like it, I loved it. The narrator is fantastic.

The synopsis says it's a detective novel. It's starts out a little slow on the "detective" side. That's one of the reasons I am glad I listened instead of trying to read it. I don't think I would have stayed with it long enough to get hooked. The other reason I am glad I listened to the audiobook is, the narrator is phenomenal.

The main character has tourette's syndrome. The way the narrator perform all of the main characters ticks and outbursts is far, far better than I would have in my own head. I wouldn't even know how to read it.

Once the story got to the "whodunnit" part of it, it hooked me right away.

Haunting and brilliant

A tour de force! An alibaba's cave of the treasures of Tourette's. One recalls Oliver Sacks. The writing and performance are uncanny in their unsentimental accuracy. Unforgettable!

Fabulous writing, fabulous performance

I read this book years ago, when it first came out. Jonathan Lethem is an extraordinary writer with a gift for language that’s hard to beat. I can’t believe how well Geoffrey Cantor handles this book, this language. Thank you so much!