A fantastic coming-of-age tale set in mid-to-late 1970s Brooklyn. Two motherless boys grow up next door to one another: Mingus Rude, son of an R&B singer, and Dylan Ebdus, son of a University Professor, grow up together on their block following first their passion for comic books (the title is drawn from the name of Superman's secret base in the Arctic) and later their love of graffiti and hip-hop. First and foremost a tale of friendship's makings and falling apart, Lethem also adds a healthy dose of race, class, gentrification, loyalty, and memory to create on of the most satisfying coming of age stories that I have ever read. This isn't A Separate Peace (thank god!), and while it isn't my favorite Lethem, it's certainly up there.

This story focuses on two friends, one white and black, growing up in Brooklyn. It begins in the 60s and spans the next several decades. It is somewhat based on Lethem's own childhood. It is a sprawling, over-stuffed novel, overshadowing some fine writing and characterizations. I am glad I read it but it wasn't as strong as I had hoped.

I FINALLY FINISHED THIS BOOK WHAT YEAR IS IT

I can't believe I finished this book. I found Lethem's writing style extremely irritating, and it would be impossible to keep count of all the turns of phrase that just didn't make any sense. I kept at it, because the subject matter could make for a great book, and I wanted to like it given my admiration for hip hop, graffiti art, and punk, and the fact that I've spent time in Brooklyn, but this is far from great.
Not to mention that Lethem commits the egregious crime of making one of the main characters into a "Magical Black Man" trope. And I don't just mean the flying.
Save your time, skip this.

Review on Spanish.
El libro está bien escrito y tiene una narración clara y sin mayores adornos. Legible para cualquier edad. Lo cual es una pena, si me preguntan a mí.
No me parece que el título sea adecuado, además, siendo que la soledad del protagonista no era de ninguna forma una fortaleza, cualquiera entraba de formas más o menos abruptas y antojosas sin que Dylan, el protagonista, pudiera hacer gran cosa para impedirlo. A decir verdad, ni siquiera era una soledad que él hubiera querido en verdad, siendo que fue impulsada a ella por el ambiente en el que había sido criado y los traumas que le acarrearon hasta su adultez.
La historia de su juventud tampoco es una gran epopeya sobre el marginamiento y la lucha contra este. Sino que es una absurda retrospección sobre ser diferente durante su estancia en la escuela, lo cual prontamente desaparece cuando va a la universidad y posteriormente va a trabajar como adulto. Lo cual no ocurre con sus compañeros que sí son marginados a lo largo de toda su vida y acaban estancados en su rincón, al margen de la ley o muertos. Mi consejo sería, no te quejes tanto, niño privilegiado, haz algo de provecho y deja de colgarte del bolsillo de papá.
Por las razones expuestas, este libro no encajó conmigo para nada. Ni siquiera lo recomendaría para pasar el rato, a pesar de que la narración es sencilla y se pasan las hojas, considero que hay mucho mejores libros para perder el tiempo.

Lethem's melancholic reworking of his New York childhood nostalgia, perhaps, capturing both the first-hand realism and the somewhat meandering semi-plotting of actual memories.

I started reading this book solely because I liked the name. I thought I knew what genre it was; I was very wrong. This is as far out of my comfort zone as can be, I guess.

So I'm not really sure why I liked it that much. I really did. It was great. Maybe a new fave. I'm still processing it.

Also, I did get what I asked for: many looks at the various faces of solitude.

What a shit storm. This is one of the more plodding books I have engaged in my time as a reader. It ranks up there with one of the only other books I have abandoned, Updike's Rabbit, Run. Updike and Lethem also hold the distinction of being some of the worst writers of prose I have encountered. My god, I hate the way they write.

Not recommended.

I concur with the reviewers before me. The first half of this book is fantastic; once it leaves the Boerum Hill setting, it loses its way. I’d give 5 stars to that first part and 3 stars to the second, so here we are at 4 stars.

It was a real treat to read those sections set in Boerum Hill, as I live mere blocks away. It’s one of the most beautiful slivers of New York City, and I’ve often wondered about its history while walking through. Lethem does just an extraordinary job of limning the neighborhood, and does so with such care and passion — it’s some of those most immersive prose I’ve read.

The maximalist style is for the most part enjoyable, but the sentences do get a little too clunky and gawky for my taste at parts, and often impeded meaning. I found myself wishing Lethem had made clarity more of a priority. This is one of those books that reads as though the author wrote it entirely for themselves, and so it has the good and bad of that (the good being the passion and detail, the bad being the esoteric references and shortage of clarity).

I didn’t mind Lethem’s choice to include elements of magical realism, but they could have been incorporated with more depth and grace. This book is a bit of a mess structurally…I can’t imagine it was written from a thorough outline. The second half of the book reads as though Lethem is no longer writing memoir but rather using newer memories as backdrops for invented events. So that second half feels contrived compared to the lush first, and I felt a little cheated as a reader.

I see what Lethem was trying to do, and I don’t think he quite hit the mark. Even so, I enjoyed the Boerum Hill sections so much that I’m sure I’ll remember this book well and fondly.

Yalnızlık Kalesi çok yüksek dozda Amerika ve Brooklyn içeren, okumakta çok zorlandığım bir roman oldu. Amerikan popüler kültürü ve müziğinin detaylarında boğuldum; New York sokaklarının şiddetinden ve hikayenin sertliğinden bezdim. Bütün bunların ötesinde romanın biçimi ve dili hikayeye yabancılaştırdı beni; daha farklı yazılsa sevebileceğim bir hikayenin içine giremedim maalesef.

I'm pretty disappointed in this book, to continue with the superman metaphor, it just never took off. It dragged and dragged and the characters weren't all that compelling or likable to follow for 508 pages. The ending was sorta blah too. I had such high hopes for this based on all the accolades it received and the opinion I had formed of the author based on his other books, but this was just so-so.

I feel like I started reading this book in the 70s, that's how long it took me to get through. The 70s are fitting since that's when the best bits of this long sprawling story take place. I really liked most of it. Liked some parts OK and then barely liked others.

Growing up in NYC I sparked to Lethem's vivid and visceral portrait of growing up in a Brooklyn unrecognizable to the Millennial dominated, ultra PC, safe as houses, new construction luxury rentals and hipster cafe that it is now. To a Manhattanite, skinny and sometimes scared white boy, Brooklyn was cool and slightly scary back them. And Dylan Ebdus, the main character in Lethem's ode to his own childhood was familiar and absorbing. He's trying to fit in with the tougher (and goofier) kids on the block, trying to raise himself with an absent mother and an obsessive artist father. There's love there, but it's not warm. Dylan is an outsider even at home.

Lethem's writing is crisp and creative. Here's one nice tidbit: "He flashed a smile like a torn photograph, his voice crept around corners in the air." He's observant and just flat out good. The kids in the hood are pitch perfect, the neighborhood comes alive. The adult characters work too but are more archetypal (the drug addict, the artist, the gentrifier...) and less fully formed.

But as I referenced, it's long. Really long. It could and maybe should have been a trilogy. That would have saved me from reading at least one of them, where the novel takes a strange turn to the supernatural with invisible crime fighter, prison life, heavy on the homoeroticism, which I didn't see coming (get it?) and felt out of place.

Anyway, I'm still a Lethem fan. But less would've been more here for me.