Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem
I don’t have a great deal to say about this book. That’s not because I didn’t like it. In fact, the reverse is true and I enjoyed it a great deal. No, the reason I expect to be unusually brief is because there is one central pleasure to be gained from reading this book, in my opinion, and that is being inside the head of the narrator, Lionel Essrog, and listening to his internal and external voice. The plot – and this is a sort of detective novel set mainly in 1950s New York amongst the Goodfellows and the Wise Guys – starts off well but peters out. By the end I’d lost interest as the denouement unfolded.
Lionel is the reason to read this book. He has Tourette’s, with its involuntary tics and unstoppable outbursts of jumbled up, interconnected words and profanities. Of course, 1950s Brooklyn is not the time and place to have such a condition as it is little understood and sympathised with even less. Yet Essrog is a likeable, loyal and kind character. He’s also something of an outsider because of his condition and also because he was brought up in a Brooklyn orphanage – hence the title. When the book begins, he and three other orphans, Tony, Danny and Gilbert, have been working for a small-time hustler called Frank Minna since they were young boys in a mix of low level legit and illegitimate jobs. Now adults and known as the Minna Men, they still work for Frank in, let’s say, ambiguous jobs whilst operating out of a detective agency and limousine business.
The novel starts with a violent, world-altering event for Lionel. He and Gilbert accompany Frank on a job and drive their boss to a secret meeting. When they eventually rendezvous with Frank, he has been fatally stabbed and their dash to a hospital is in vain. Now the whirling thoughts in his head are matched by the whirling of events around him. Gilbert is charged with murder, even though Lionel knows he is innocent. Solving the crime becomes his personal mission. First and foremost, he has a duty of honour to Frank. We quickly understand that the Minna Men and Frank are his family and that his now deceased boss had provided Lionel with a safe environment. Frank was the first to recognise his condition and helped Lionel educate himself about his neuro-diversity. Frank may have been using Lionel and the others but that didn’t mean he didn’t care for them. Lionel needs to find his killer not just to honour Frank but to try and calm down the increased activity in his head as well as freeing Gilbert.
There are plenty of suspects – Frank’s wife and also his brother, a bigger mobster than Frank, who has now reinvented in California as a lifestyle guru; and then there’s Tony, the ambitious Minna Man who believes he has mafiosa blood pumping through him. Yet Lionel’s picaresque investigation to find the truth is more Scooby Doo than Philip Marlowe; and as I’ve already stated, that’s not where the heart of this book lies.
Read this book because Lionel’s slightly skewed but perceptive take on the events around him is moving and funny. Read it for the poetic and musical splurge of phrases that seem at the same time nonsensical and yet with their own internal coherence – they pour out of Lionel at moments of high drama. Read it to get a better understanding of his condition. I don’t think Lethem has Tourette’s but through Lionel he provides a convincing explanation of what is going on in his head and why. I guess I’m just saying: read it.