Motherless Brooklyn
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4.1 • 15 Ratings
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- $27.99
Publisher Description
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 c*m 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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Filled with mystery, intrigue, and plenty of profane outbursts, Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn became an instant classic when it was first published in 1999. Lionel Essrog is a Brooklyn detective with Tourette’s syndrome, and he’s out to find the culprits responsible for the death of his friend and mentor, Frank Minna. Lethem’s novel makes clever use of stock detective-novel tropes and zany humor, but he never sacrifices character for quirk—he makes us genuinely care about Lionel and his avenging quest. Actor Geoffrey Cantor (The Punisher) narrates, creating distinct voices for Lethem’s varied and eccentric characters without turning them into parodies. It’s a great way to revisit Lionel, or to meet him for the first time.
