Robert

A brilliant book, even better recorded.

Revisado: 03-05-17

Lethem's take on the hard-boiled genre and his finest novel by far, Motherless Brooklyn is an ambivalent love letter-cum-polemic of the borough that provides it's setting, attitude, and narrative core. His choice of a Tourettic narrator, which could easily descend into the gimmicky and lazy, resists every easy out and provides a fascinating insight on a syndrome, a vanished culture and world, and, above all, the mind of a fascinating and fully-realized man. The verbal tics that pepper Lionel's dialogue are convincingly and evocatively read in Cantor's performance, adding to the internal music and logic that emerges from them over the course of the novel.
This is not a mystery to read for its plot, beyond the broadest generalities. Rather, it is a novel of line-by-line rewards that both ennoble and mock the body of mystery from which they draw, in much the same way that the story treats Brooklyn itself.
Having read this book both before and after Chandler and other classic noir writers, I can attest that there is great enjoyment here both with and without familiarity with the literary background.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

esto le resultó útil a 16 personas

Raymond Chandler for the twenty-second century, warts and all.

Revisado: 02-22-17

This book does a masterful job of channeling what made the greats of the hard-boiled genre great, while also bringing something of its own in its unconventional, unsettling near-future setting. The reading is outstanding as well. I came to this book from Lethem's later novel Motherless Brooklyn, and, for anyone else in the same position, I can say that much of what makes Motherless Brooklyn such a success is fully at work here. The sole caveat is that the deep love for place in Lionel Esrogg's Brooklyn does not come through as clearly for John Metcalf's Oakland - or may just have been lost on me.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña

Painfully gimmicky, without the substance to follow through.

Revisado: 02-05-17

What this book is: a painfully gimmicky, faux-folksy ramble through a Vermont landscape that can't seem to decide if the year is 2017 or 1924.

What the author attempts: a structure that, while initially attention-grabbing, ultimately detracts from what plot there is and highlights the other flaws of the story.

What works: some of the moments cut out of the narrator's life are convincingly familiar.

What doesn't: the absurdly cherubic/precocious children, the almost total lack of a plot, the painfully predictable "twist," and the irritating structural gimmick.

Has calificado esta reseña.

Reportaste esta reseña