I wanted to see this movie when it came out so I thrilled to find the book. While I liked the concept of the plot and having a main character with tourette's I simply couldn't get engaged.

Read the novel, watched the film. Edward Norton’s long-brewed adaptation has a more interesting plot than Lethem’s, replacing the farcical intrigue with Japanese oligarchs and practitioners of Buddhist zazen meditation with a more narratively meaty tale of infrastructural racism based on the urban planning and slum-clearances of Robert Moses. Lethem’s novel is more hardboiled, nastier and scuzzier than Norton’s occasionally breezy throwback noir, with the protagonist Lionel more browbeaten, outcast, and pitiful than the pretty putz in the flick. As novel-to-screen collaborations fare, these two work in heavenly sync, serving up two very unique creations that straddle their zeitgeists nimbly.

Hilarious, heartbreaking, and harrowing at the same time. Poor Essrog: he just doesn't get it, till the end, when he becomes unwittingly the coolest and most unconventional detective ever. Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade would definitely be proud.

Mr. Lethem's language and word choices dazzle, giving us a detective story that is both conventional, and human. He can make one feel the Brooklyn of the 1970s to the 1990s, shifting neighborhoods, wayward orphan boys, the Mafia, and small time crooks.

Other characters such as Frank and Gerard Minna, Julia and Kimmery, Tony, and the Japanese gang all complete this ultimately, humorous and touching read about what it means to be yourself.

Bu kitap dedektiflik romanı mı? Pulp fiction mı? Taşlama mı? Mizah mı? Ciddi bir roman mı? Yoksa hepsi mi?

Öksüz Brooklyn kafamı allak bullak etti. Yazara çok saygı duydum, peki tam olarak ne okudum ben?

Başkarakterimiz Lionel, arka kapaktan da bildiğiniz gibi, Tourette sendromlu bir karakter. Geniş bir spektrumda tikleri var. Konuşmalarının arasına alakasız gibi görünen sözler giriyor, durduk yere havlıyor, insanların omuzlarına vuruyor, bir şeylere dokunma ihtiyacı duyuyor... Unutmadan, bir de OKB'si var. Liste uzayıp gidiyor. Hal böyle olunca kitabın başlarında çok yoruldum. Lethem karakteri o kadar başarılı yazmıştı ki onun tikler selinde olayı takip etmeye çalışmak, hadi onu da geçtim, metni kopmadan okumak benim için bir mücadeleye dönüşmüştü. Pes etmedim, ama taktik değiştirdim ve kendimi Tourette'in kontrolüne bıraktım. O zaman her şey yerli yerine oturdu. Gündelik bir zihinle mücadeleye girişmek saçmalıkmış. Tourette sendromundan bana yol göstermesini isteyince her şey yerli yerine oturdu.

Lionel'u gerçekten sevdim. Böyle bir karakteri başarıyla yazabilmek, ama ondan da önemlisi, ona başrolü verebilmek bence bir başarıdır. Dahası Lionel'un Frank Minna ile, diğer öksüzler ile olan ilişkisi benim için onu bir karakter olarak değerli, sevilesi yaptı. Sonrasında Brooklyn ön plana çıktı ve Lethem'in daha ilk sayfadan başladığı "metropoller ve Tourette sendromu arasındaki bağlam"a dair tespitlerine kapılıp gittim.
Bir an için bunu ilk sayfada bırakacak sanmıştım, ama tıpkı sendromun kendisi gibi, olur olmadık zamanlarda yazar da bu bağlamda çok ilginç şeylere işaret etmeye başladı.

Öksüz Brooklyn bence sevmesi kolay bir kitap değil. Herhangi bir türe oturmayan, kendi tarzında bir dile, tuhaf karakterlere sahip. Kimilerine deli saçması gelebilir. Benim içinse zoru başarmış, altına bir kurgu inşa etmiş, onun da altında hiçbirimizin sandığımız kadar normal olmadığını, hatta daha yaşadığımız o koca koca şehirler "normal" değilken bizim kendimize "normal" dememizin saçmalık olduğunun mesajını gizlemiş. Ben alt metinde bunu tattım ve bundan mutlu oldum.

Çevirmen Sabri Gürses'ten de mutlaka bahsetmek gerek, çünkü eşsiz bir iş ortaya koymuş. Lionel'un tiklerinin coştuğu yerlerde yaptığı Türkçeleştirmeler özellikle dikkat çekici. Ahengi ve kafiyeyi bozmamak için çok güzel alternatifler türetmiş. Bu kitap motamot çeviriyle rahatlıkla katledilebilirdi, neyse ki Sabri Bey gibi tecrübeli bir çevirmen tercih edilmiş de kitabın doğası korunmuş. Ama eserin kendisine epey ter döktürdüğüne inanıyorum. Bence her damlasına değen bir sonuç çıkmış.

Okuduğum için mutluyum. Öte yandan film uyarlamasını beğenmedim.

Frank Minna was a small fish in a big city pond full of piranhas and scum. He was nimble, though; good with angles. His best move was when he recruited four young guys from the local orphanage, before they were old enough to shave, to be errand boys. These young bucks were eager, loyal assistants that somebody dubbed Motherless Brooklyn. Frank treated them to bigger boy delights like twenty dollar bills and bottles of beer for their efforts, and they just stayed on staff as they got older and more useful. They were not typically involved in anything all that bad, but an element of shadiness did exist – under-the-table, dark-alley, undercover kind of stuff.

The most memorable character from a cast chock full of them was Lionel Essrog. He was the biggest and lumpiest of Frank’s boys. Beyond Lionel’s bruiser/enforcer looks was the fact that he had Tourette’s. He always made Frank laugh with his verbal tics and twitchiness. It’s gratifying to find, though, that Lionel is not entirely defined by his condition. He had a hale and hearty interior life just below the surface.

As the fast-paced storyline develops, Lionel and a colleague witness a terrible, unexplained act perpetrated against Frank. Each of the boys, now Minna “Men”, reacts in a different way, mostly grabbing for power and prestige while trying to appear helpful. Lionel is the one most willing and able to actually figure things out. He proves to be surprisingly effective at gathering information and piecing together clues, all the while navigating his way through the Tourettic minefield. The inner workings of the guy’s mind were fascinating to see.

This is one of those books that arbiters of such things would call a genre buster. It certainly works as a mystery/action/crime/thriller. But it has legitimate lit cred, too. It won some national book critics’ award, after all. I liked the mix, but then I’m the kind of guy who’d have no trouble washing a deep-dish pizza down with a fine Barolo wine.

Something else a real reviewer would say, I’m sure, is that the place is a character, too. Lethem did a great job of bringing Brooklyn alive. Maybe he was helped by the fact that we’ve seen so much of urban jungle life in movies, but I had a clear picture in my head of the surroundings each step of the way.

All in all, it’s a fast and enjoyable read, with a different kind of protagonist to pull for. A solid 4 stars.

Prima di tutto mi unisco a chi prima di me ha criticato la discutibile scelta della traduzione del titolo in italiano, che sarebbe stato preciso se fosse stato tradotto letteralmente dal titolo americano, Brooklyn senza madre.
E' un giallo con caratteristiche peculiari: la trama gialla c’è, c’è l’omicidio di Frank Minna, un piccolo boss italoamericano invischiato con la mafia e con affari made in Japan; c’è uno dei suoi Uomini, Lionel Essrog, soprannominato Testadipazzo, che si improvvisa detective per scoprire chi l’ha ucciso; ci sono tanti strani personaggi di contorno, che caratterizzano la storia come fosse una pellicola cinematografica (a proposito, ho letto che c’è un progetto di trarre un film da questo libro, che secondo me è adattissimo allo scopo), magari di Woody Allen. Ma andando avanti con la lettura, l’attenzione del lettore non è concentrata tanto sulla trama gialla, ma sui protagonisti: Lionel Essrog e la sua sindrome di Tourette. Ignoravo l’esistenza di questa malattia ossessivo compulsiva caratterizzata da tic verbali, consistenti nella emissione di parole senza senso, disarticolate, e fisici. L’elemento drammatico della storia emerge dalle pagine del libro: Lionel, malato di Tourette, è cresciuto in un orfanatrofio di Brooklyn, solo, senza amici, fino a quando non viene “adottato” da Frank Minna, un boss mafioso di Court Street. E’ già difficile andare avanti deriso dagli altri, come un testadipazzo; figuriamoci mettersi a fare il detective!
Lethem riesce ottimamente a stemperare il lato drammatico con i toni fantastici, a volte surreali, dell’incontenibilità linguistica e corporea di Lionel Essrog, personaggio verso il quale si prova un mix di tenerezza ed affetto, che non impediscono di trattenere un sorriso per gli effetti sbalorditivi che le sue ossessioni, che puntualmente compaiono nei momenti meno opportuni, provocano su chi si trova di fronte. Un personaggio con il quale si rimane invischiati, con le sue frasi sconnesse, i colpetti alle spalle, i baci e le sue ossessioni numeriche.
E dunque non potrei classificare il romanzo come un giallo o un noir, non è catalogabile in una categoria precisa, se non in quella di un bel romanzo di uno scrittore eclettico e talentuoso.
Il mio primo incontro con Lethem è stato positivo, ora ho da leggere quello che dicono sia il suo capolavoro, “la fortezza della solitudine”.

Is Jonathan Lethem a genius? A virtuoso? (to use the terms used ad naus. in The Loser) I think not. Is Motherless Brooklyn a work of genius? Also no. But that doesn't mean it isn't still awesome.

Lethem's deconstruction of the detective novel is painfully obvious. He fashions his protagonist by stripping him of one of the most recognizable traits of the hard-boiled private eye--laconism. Lionel Essrog doesn't have a way with words; they have their way with him. Every time he questions someone to get information about Frank's death, he runs the risk of his brain making him say something compromising. So that's sort of a new angle. And Lethem's riffs on the tics and fits of Tourette's are usually funny and/or illuminating and very rarely tiresome. I got a word out of it that will probably be useful sometime, too--Zengeance. I guess my definition of it would be a cross between witnessed karma and schadenfreude.

So here's the big question: if Lionel's Tourette's is so unmanageable, so compulsive, than why is the narrative voice relatively free of tics? Nathan says that Lethem is ignoring an industry standard and leaving a lack of unity between Lionel's character and the narrative voice, which is ostensibly supposed to be Lionel's. I read it differently, though. Let's be honest here: do we really want to read a novel that is truly written, through and through, in the voice of someone with Tourette's? It might be interesting, but it would probably be too frazzled and discontinuous to contain all the other elements that Lethem clearly wants his story to contain. More than that: Lethem wants to give Lionel the verbal grace that he deserves, whether his thought-patterns realistically would look like that or not. It's not strange for an author to use a more elevated style than that of his characters, although it may be a little strange to try and pull it off in the first person. This case is less carelessness and more a willful rejection of something that came before, just as Lethem rejects normal detective-novel conventions in favor of something a little more wrinkled and faded.

But here's why this isn't just a genre work, or an anti-genre work:

- Lionel's loss of innocence at finding out the true nature of Frank Minna, as well as the nature of just about every other character in the novel. No hard-boiled protagonist ever has any innocence left by the time we meet him; including this aspect could be read as anti-genre but the deftness and sincerity with which it's handled indicate a book that goes a little further than mere spoof or homage or deconstruction.

- Matricardi and Rockaforte, two aging mobsters that skirt around the edges of the story and never become major characters. These two guys are symbols of a number of things that no longer exist, and seem like characters straight out of one of the more conventional Delillo novels, maybe Underworld. But even though they get very few pages, they get fully realized in those few pages, which is something I feel you won't get from your standard detective novel or detective-novel-parody.

- Frank Minna himself. Hard to elaborate on this one without giving any spoilers, but suffice it to say that though most characters in this novel are more than they seem (not surprising), Minna is both more and less (surprising).

- Lethem never bends over backwards to set up parallels between Tourette's and anything else, beyond doing stuff like describing NY as Tourettic. But it strikes me that Lionel's quest to find Frank's killer mirrors his quest to find a cure, a balm, or treatment for his Tourette's. Both are things that corrupt and decay you from the inside out, things you could devote a lifetime to and never come close to finding the answer.

Is the plot a little predictable? Maybe. The style a little too lightweight? Maybe, but only if you come in expecting real weight. I think Lethem is capable of weight, but it's not on display here. But that turns out to be fine.

And Nathan, the only similarity I catch between Motherless Brooklyn and American Psycho is the mini-essay on Prince (AP has mini-essays on Whitney Houston, Huey Lewis and the News, and Genesis).

1979 yılında Frank Minna, Brooklyn’deki bir yetimhanenin müdürüyle anlaşarak dört beyaz çocuğu- Tony, Danny, Gilbert ve Lionel- çalıştırmak için yanında götürür. Görünüşte taşımacılık yapan Minna aslında iki gangsterin ayak işlerini yapmaktadır. Bir süre boyunca bu çocukları günlük taşımacılık işlerinde çalıştırır. İşteki sorunlar yüzünden şehri terk eder iki yıllığına. Geri döndüğünde okulu bırakmaya gönüllü dört çocuğu yanına alır. Limuzin servisi görünümünde bir dedektiflik şirketi kurar. 15 yıl sonra Gilbert ve Lionel’in gözcülük yaptığı bir vakada öldürülür Minna. Hayatta ona en yakın insan olan Minna’nın ölümüyle duygusal açıdan sarsılan Tourette sendromlu Lionel, Minna’nın katilini bulmak ve olayı çözmek için harekete geçer.

Tourette’e rağmen, zaman zaman Tourette sayesinde, ipuçlarını birleştirerek gerçeği öğrenmeye çalışan Lionel’ın bilinç düzeyinden anlatılıyor hikaye. Zaman örgüsü ve Tourette Sendromu hikayeyi farklılaştırırken, Lionel’ın duygu durumları tempoyu belirliyor. Dürtüleri, tikleri, takıntıları ve krizleri eşliğinde Minna’nın katilinin izini sürüyor Lionel.

I was very intruiged to listen to this detective crime novel with a protagonist with Touretts. It was something very diffrent but also something similar with the detective storyline. An very enjoyable audiobook experience

Nem is értem, hogy maradt ki nekem ez a regény, de szerencsére a film felhozta. Megnéztem azt is, mert alapos ember vagyok. Egyik sem hibátlan, de megérte. A közös bennük mindössze New York és a Tourette-szindrómás főhős. Az eredeti történetből nem sok maradt a filmben, és nem is akkor játszódik, hanem az ötvenes években, de ez utóbbi nem válik a kárára. Alapvetően Edward Norton és a Nagy Alma rajongóinak ajánlom, mert elég hosszú, és kicsit unalmas is, de képileg remek. A regény neo-noir, a főhős kiválasztása és megformálása zseniális, de a többi figura is jól meg van írva. Nekem kicsit döcögős volt az eleje, a közepe leült, a vége meg túlpörgött, de összességében nagyon érdekesnek találtam. A Tourette-es szójátékokat nehéz lehetett átültetni, nem is tudom megítélni, hogy sikerült, de szórakoztató volt. Nálam négyes fölé, a film inkább négyes alá.

story-wise, i guess i'm picky with my detective novels because it didn't quite zing for me...... but i will say that i've never before read a book narrated in first-person by a character with tourette's syndrome. i don't have much background knowledge on tourette's and can't say definitively whether or not the mc lionel essrog is good representation. BUT from an outsider perspective, i learned a lot about how tics work (at least for lionel) and reading about how he navigates the world and his love for prince music were honestly the more interesting parts for me (despite having nothing to do with the main conflict).

I think from now, I'm going to take the term "genre-bending" to be a warning. It always feels more like it turns out to be a nicer term for "slumming". Maybe it's just me.

While MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN is well-written and starts strong, when it is forced to finish the mystery that is supposed to drive the story, it really falls into pretty ordinary territory. It is not as easy to write a compelling mystery as it looks. It can't just be clever. It has to be about something.

This will sound far more insulting than it is intended, but this could have been a great long short story or even novella, but as a novel it becomes either repetitious or just goes through the motions to get to the end.

There is a distance between the author and the characters that constantly reminds the reader that they are constructed, and never feel real. The style of writing and artificiality of the story keep us looking up at the puppet master rather than the puppets.

Something like THE BIG LEBOWSKI embraces the structure and complexity of a Ross MacDonald novel, while telling it through new and original characters. Lethem may like Ross MacDonald and may have been influenced by it, but it feels like the genre elements aren't just being used, but they are being used begrudgingly and can only be expressed with tongue in cheek.

I'm going to read the other reviews and see if I missed something. Maybe I just read this book at the wrong time. Some time book and mood don't mesh.