Brooklyn Crime Novel by Jonathan Lethem

Published by Ecco on October 3, 2023

Every other Jonathan Lethem book I’ve read, I enjoyed. This one didn’t speak to me. The story, to the extent that one exists, is told in a series of vignettes that explore an significant number of mostly male characters of varying ages and races and their relationships in Brooklyn between the 1930s and the upcoming end of the Trump administration.

The first sentence of chapter 2 is “This is a story about what nobody knows.” Count me among those who don’t know. Lethem later confesses that he’s probably losing the reader. Count me among the lost. Confessing that you're turning off readers is a very postmodernist thing to do, but it makes the book unappealing for anyone but diehard students of postmodernism.

I don’t fault Lethem for lack of ambition. I imagine he was trying to create a micro-history of Brooklyn with an emphasis on its unsavory flavors, a chronicle of changes that replaced impoverished criminals with wealthy ones. I fault the meandering execution, the episodic storytelling that never quite coheres, the failure to encourage readers to invest in the characters. To me, the novel felt like scenes cut from a movie. I would rather have seen the movie.

Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood. Lethem’s attempts to create a level of intimacy with the reader that he fails to achieve. I generally enjoy Lethem's prose, as I did in this novel, but sharp sentences just aren't enough. Some street scenes are vivid; some characters have the feel of authenticity. But — perhaps because I’m getting old — I lost track the characters and then lost track of my attempts to keep track of them. Finally, I lost interest.

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