Motherless Brooklyn

"New York is a Tourettic city," claims Lionel, the protagonist of Jonathan Lethem's 1999 novel, Motherless Brooklyn. And Lionel would know something about it, since he has Tourette's Syndrome, a condition defined by a spectrum of tic disorders, in his case both physical and vocal. The logophile will either love or hate Lionel, for he obsessively deconstructs overheard language into new phrases and words, sometimes interjecting them into his everyday speech. Thus, the novel is stylized by Lionel's disorder, melding a psychological study with hard-boiled detective piece, which ostensibly makes up the framework of the plot.

Lionel is an orphan living in Brooklyn, reared and schooled by the manipulative Brooklyn-ese philosophy of small-time crook, Frank Minna. When Minna is killed, Lionel and his orphan brothers, the self titled Minna Men, sort out who will take over Minna's enterprise and figure out who killed their mentor.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Motherless Brooklyn is a cerebral, genre-cracking addition to the mythology of that multi-national borough, sure to enthrall both the character-study readers, and those who open a book for a great detective plot.