2.14.2012

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN by Jonathan Lethem

Links for the East Side Reading Group






1 comment:

RkC said...

Thanks for coming out to discuss Motherless Brooklyn. Most of the day- and night-time readers enjoyed this Lethem novel, finding the Lionel character interesting and sympathetic, although sometimes hard to follow. Others found it more of a hard-boiled mystery than they were expecting, but with interesting Brooklyn & Buddhist overtones.

Pat mentioned that so many characters had their own crazy ways about them, Lionel's particular shade of weirdness nearly just blended in. We talked about Dickensian themes (a favorite of Lethem's), i.e., the orphan boys being trained to steal by an older man (David Copperfield), the two old gangsters still living in their mother's brownstone (Great Expectations). And with Chandler's Philip Marlowe being invoked several times, the detective doesn't get to keep the girl, solves the complex case, sees that justice is meted out one way or another, and returns to the streets for more detecting.

This was not exactly the book I meant to read. I said the title, but I was really thinking of Fortress of Solitude, another of his Brooklyn books that sounded great & was well-received.