Motherless Brooklyn (1999) by Jonathan Lethem

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Motherless Brooklyn (1999)

by Jonathan Lethem

6138 

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 24/26 

New York: 101/103

  True confession: I get Jonathan Lethem and Paul Auster confused, all the time.  Perpetually, as it were. Motherless Brooklyn was a popular and critical breakthrough for Lethem after several books of sci fi/fantasy/lit fic at a time when that wasn't really a thing. After Motherless Brooklyn broke out he's published regularly though none of his books have gone canonical post-Motherless Brooklyn.  Personally, I read his post-apocalypse/published during the pandemic book about Maine, The Arrest, which I enjoyed but didn't love.

 I've never had any inclination to go back and read the rest of his bibliography, as indeed I had not actually read Motherless Brooklyn. One aspect that stuck out to me is that this is one of the last canonically New York books to be published right before 9/11, and it is, simply put, a more innocent era, when an American author could spin together a genre detective story with literary fiction qualities and leave out the global war on terror, or the terrific/terrible impact 9/11 had on everyone in New York City.   I listened to the Audiobook- which was a good Audiobook, not great, but good. It was much appreciated after umpteen Audiobooks of bildungsroman's narrated by pre-teen girls born to immigrant parents, but like Paul Auster's meta-detective fiction I didn't find Motherless Brooklyn compelling.