Motherless Brooklyn: A Novel (Vintage Contemporaries)
Motherless Brooklyn is a 2000 novel that follows the motives and relationships behind a crime while steadily building tension.
Work Information
The clearer the outline of the case becomes, the more complicated the characters' relationships grow.
Motherless Brooklyn layers clues and shifting emotions so the reader follows not only the truth of the case but also the relationships around it. As the story moves forward, the tension outside the investigation comes into view.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
- Published
- 2000-10-24
- Pages
- 315 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.21 x 1.78 x 20.32 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780375724831
- ISBN-10
- 0375724834
- Price
- 3319 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Mystery & Thrillers/Mystery
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A complusively readable riff on the classic detective novel f rom America's most inventive novelist. "A half-satirical cross between a literary novel and a hard-boiled crime story narrated by an amateur detective with Tourette's syndrome.... The dialogue crackles with caustic hilarity.... Unexpectedly moving." — The Boston Globe Brooklyn's very own self-appointed Human Freakshow, Lionel Essrog is an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart our language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank Minna, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable, so who cares if the tasks he sets them are, well, not exactly legal. But when Frank is fatally stabbed, one of Lionel's colleagues lands in jail, the other two vie for his position, and the victim's widow skips town. Lionel's world is suddenly topsy-turvy, and this outcast who has trouble even conversing attempts to untangle the threads of the case while trying to keep the words straight in his head. Motherless Brooklyn is a brilliantly original, captivating homage to the classic detective novel by one of the most acclaimed writers of his generation.
JONATHAN LETHEM is the author of six novels, including the best sellers The Fortress of Solitude , which was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice for one of the best books of 2003, and Mother Brooklyn , which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named novel of the year by Esquire, McSweeney's , Tin House , The New York Times , the Paris Review , and a variety of other periodicals and anthologies. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and in Maine.
Reviews
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ボスを殺された元孤児の孤独な捜査
主人公は、トゥーレット症候群を患う孤児院出身の青年で、孤児院時代から繋がりのあるボスのもと、ブルックリンで、表向きは配車サービスを、実際には少々いかがわしい探偵業に従事している。そのボスが、主人公の目の前で拉致され、殺されてしまったことから、彼は独自に捜査に乗り出し、事件の秘密、ボスの過去の秘密に迫っていく。殺人事件はストーリーの最初の方に起こるが、その後は過去に遡り、主人公とボスの関係の説明にページが割かれるため、テンポが遅くじれったい。終盤では大きく話が展開し（日本人や座禅道場も出てくる）、結末も意外性があって面白いが、前半が丁寧に書かれている割には、事件解決の中心となる後半はかなり急いでいる感じで、サスペンスとしては何かバランスが悪く、物足りない。ところで、トゥーレット症候群では、本人の意思に関わらず、あらぬ言葉が次々に飛び出してしまうのだが、たびたび出てくるこういう状況を笑うわけにもいかず、読者はどう対応すればよいのか判断に苦しむ。英語は、スラングも多く、かなり難しい。
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This book took rather a long time to arrive and seems to have been borrowed from a public lending library. Apart from that I have started reding it and with I guess everything by Jonathan Letham you start having your sense or reality warped.
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Frank Minna, ein Kleinrimineller in New York nimmt in den 1980er vier Teenager aus einem Waisenhaus unter seine Fittiche. Unter anderem Lionel, einen Jungen mit Tourette-Syndrom. Jahre später wird Minna vor den Augen seiner Zöglinge ermordet und Lionel macht sich daran, den Mörder zu finden. Sehr flüssig und unterhaltsam geschriebener Krimi im Noir-Stil, dessen Hauptfigur eine Mischung aus Sam Spade und Adrian Monk ist. Gekonnt haucht der Autor Geschichte und Charakteren Leben ein und zieht den Leser schnell in seinen Bann. Wohltuend zurückhaltend zeigt er die Abnormitäten seines Protagonisten, die einen Hauptteil dessen Wesens ausmachen. Empfehlenswert, wenn auch der Krimipart maximal gleichrangig zur Millieustudie steht...
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I almost felt initially to close this, as the Tourret syndrome words were too much distraction. But in the end started loving Essorg character and sorry for him in a very deep way, because deep down there are lot more similarities between us and the freak than differences, Eat Me Horse radish..... ( You will understand once you have read)
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I loved it! This is the first book by Jonathan Lethem that I have read & now will look for others. Motherless Brooklyn gave me characters I cared about, it was laugh out loud & sad at the same time. The plot was gritty & well paced & took me to places I have never been.
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Scoperto ascoltando l'episodio del Tim Ferris Show con Edward Norton. Consiglio.
Related Literary Awards
- CWA KAA Gold Dagger Edition 46 (2000) ・Winner