Ms. Gonzo read this mystery first, after we'd been living in Brooklyn for some time, and it's quite obvious reading it that Lethem lived in the BK as well for a time.
It also seemed like his understanding of the driver-shop's neighborhood glossed over the actual neighborhood in which it took place. Landmarks were mostly accurate, but it was like he sat on a corner in downtown Brooklyn and conjured up a fantastic Brooklyn for the story...but what the hell's so wrong with that?
The other parts of the city (of Brooklyn) are rendered with at least a keen eye for recognizable specifics, as long as you weren't hoping to read about Bed-Stuy or Crown Heights or East New York, the black and West Indian nabes.
In Motherless Brooklyn we follow the Tourettes stricken main character, his being basically bought from an orphanage by a fatherly gangster, and then his adult life spent being a driver/gangster at a fake livery stand in downtown Brooklyn, and a mystery that unfolds and he has to solve it. It's a mystery novel, through and through, and it took me a while to figure out if Lethem is a serious writer horsing around or...or what else, I'm not sure. Some of his short fiction in The New Yorker is nice, but I've yet to be compelled to read Chronic City or Fortress of Solitude, but hey, some asshole may say the same shit about my material when it gets done.
As I was reading it, piecing the threads together, the end drawing nearer, then nearer, then closer still, then the climax, and a few threads were still floating around. It was about here in the book that a paragraph shored those suckers up--a paragraph, and you get the sense that Lethem himself had forgotten about them, and then needed a neat way to burn 'em off, and instead, took the laziest way out.
I'm not generally a fan of mysteries...well, not that really, just that I don't read a lot of mysteries. But I don't have a bias against them.
Let me make this clear: if all you read are trashy romance novels, if all you read are mysteries, if all you read are Harry Potter or Hunger Games kiddie stuff, AWESOME! Keep reading. Don't let anyone tell you you have to change your habits. I might have been that person in the past, but I realize just getting people interested in reading is hard enough.
So, back to mysteries: I don't know if red herring loose ends are supposed to be explained away in a paragraph. I expected to have the basic scenario explained away in a paragraph (and wasn't let down on that tip), but...I don't know.
Ms. Gonzo picked this book up upon the suggestion of her cousin, I believe. It's not bad, by any means, and the Tourette Syndrome main character yields some entertaining results.
One thing Lethem did nail, though, is the sense of belonging, the sense of being, and the sense of identity that living in Brooklyn imparts on her people. The Girl (because all mysteries need a Girl) asks our main character, "When was the last time you left the City?". He responds, "I was just in Manhattan yesterday!" To him, like so many others, Brooklyn is a world unto itself, and why would anyone want to go anywhere else?
For another, likely more gritty and accurate portrayal of the City, but unfortunately mostly in Manhattan, check out The Fuck-Up.
BROOKLYN!
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