This is the author’s 12th novel, mot of which I have read and (mostly) enjoyed, and nearly all of them were rather different from each other. In his earlier work, especially, Lethem appeared to want to try everything -- cozy murder mystery, science fiction, Chandleresque detective noir, post-apocalyptic road trip, Bildungsroman, comic book superhero, and every other genre you can think of. This one is not so much a “novel” as a large collection of shortish vignettes and scenes, but they all take place in Brooklyn in the mid-’70s, with an occasional jump to the present day for the purposes of reflection on how the past used to be. In fact, Brooklyn, the author’s home town, is itself the focus of all the pieces. It’s more important in many ways that the human characters, most of whom are never even given names. They're just “the Dean Street boys” (and they don’t all live on Dean Street), “Mr. Clean” (because he’s bald, or because he keeps his 1968 Dodge Dart Swinger so clean?), “the Italians” (who won’t allow the Dean Street boys into their neighborhood), and so on.

To the kids, every little sub-neighborhood, a few blocks along a single street, constituted a separate world, practically a micro-nation of its own. The Dean Street boys are a mix of white, brown, and black, and they think nothing of it among themselves, but they’re also aware of the racial attitudes among many of their elders. (Although Brooklyn, of course, is nothing like Alabama in that regard.) The times they are a-changing, and the kids are changing along with it, though they’re not conscious of that until much later. As one of the most important changes, the overarching theme of the book is the beginning of gentrification in the borough before anyone quite agreed on what the word meant. There’s almost no direct dialogue, no quotation marks, but the sections dealing with interactions among residents are written in pure Brooklynese. And Lethem is fluent in that, as well as being a master of the language in general. (For example, in regard to what it was like growing up at that time, he notes, “We’ll call the sixties a draw.”)

Because of the way it’s written, it’s perfectly possible to read a few pages at a time, go and do something else, and then come back to it later. Many of the characters return over and over and some of the incidents are are scattered throughout as well, but you can still take your time and pause to think about what you’re read. In fact, this may turn out to be one of Lethem;s most thought-provoking works.

DNF -

I recognize that this is good writing, it just isn't for me. I prefer a bit more narrative meat and less geographical description.

Latham’s latest has a lot going on. Different times, lots of threads. Ultimately, I bailed on this one.

This is a New York, more specifically, a Brooklyn novel from the master New York writer Jonathan Lethem. What more could anyone want?

Perfection in crime writing. Perfection in New York story-telling. Perfection, perfection, perfection.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for this Advanced Readers Copy of Brooklyn Crime Novel by Jonathan Lethem!

Through a series of interrelated vignettes, this takes the reader back to 1970s Brooklyn and the beginning of its gentrification. Focusing primarily on the young boys from the Dean Street neighborhood, it introduces the mixed cultures and ethnicities, their interconnections and the territories at a time when mostly petty crime was prevalent. It follows some of the characters into more contemporary times, charting their lives as well as the displacement of the displacers in the neighborhood.

I loved the momentous, not so momentous, and infamous history that was interspersed in the story telling, along with the iconic events/objects from the 70s. Coming from the perspective of being a New Yorker at heart and someone who actually remembers the 70s, I do wonder if others might be lost by some of the references and want to “Google” them.

The writing is a bit different from a typical narrative; it might be off putting to some. For those willing to tackle something with an atypical structure, it will be a satisfying read.

Jonathan Lethem has written a wonderful novel that brings Brooklyn alive.I was born and raised in Brooklyn and he brings the streets the people alive.This is a unique novel that kept me turning the pages.#netgalley #eccobooks

A camera lens view of life on the streets of Brooklyn in the 1970s. Jonathan Lethem offers an original novel describing incident after incident in the lives of young men in various small ethnic neighborhoods involving their in their daily walks to and from school or pick-up games between neighborhood teams. There is comment about the gentrification of the homes and how the families make ends meet. The novel offers chapter after chapter of social history of the lives of these kids.

Part fiction, part history, part love letter to a bygone time and place. Think Nabokov's Speak, Memory but for Brooklyn rather than Russia. It manages to create a vibrant picture of Brooklyn in the second half of the twentieth-century, with all its personality, quirks, and faults. Highly stylized, it won't be for everyone, but those willing to give it a chance will feel like they grew up here themselves.

We follow a cast of characters in 1970s Brooklyn, from children to police to landlords. As gentrification and crime are almost a certainty, so is family and loyalty.

Told from different perspectives throughout the years, we get a sense of what Brooklyn was and what it could be. While heartbreaking, it was beautiful to get a glimpse into each life.

Overall I enjoyed this novel. While, at times, hard to digest, it was gritty yet beautifully written.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Brooklyn Crime Novel
By Jonathan Lethem
Pub Date: October 3, 2023
Ecco
Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest opinion.
It is truly unusual and not like anything I have ever read,
. The book is very good! It includes a social commentary of Brooklyn.
4 stars

Henry Miller, patron saint of Brooklyn, though mentioned several times, the narrator’s Brooklyn experienced between the seventies and nineties during one of several cultural transformations on the cusp of gentrification, is nothing like the Brooklyn of Miller’s boyhood. Social activists and former hippies, failing to bring about the Age of Aquarius, holding on to their values of hope, disappeared into the middle-class, buying up brownstones in Brooklyn. This is the story of their children, primarily their sons, though a few daughters are present. As kids, the struggles of their parents, what little they believed they had won was lost on their sons.

Ethnic and racial gang violence took a break and within the hiatus, the territorial of ethnicity—the Italian boys ruled their neighborhoods and the black boys had the projects—the old boundaries were intact. Until the reformers and idealists moved in. They pushed their clueless sons, lacking in racial and ethnic identities, referred to by the narrator as white boys, outdoors into the streets. In his meditations on Kierkegaard, John Updike paraphrased the great Dane’s existential terror in the face of Jehovah this way: sometimes one’s terror is so intense it takes immense courage to make it to the front door just to pick up the milk. Of course, Updike was writing of a time when milkmen delivered milk house to house. But if terror could be summoned to get beyond to get to the front door, imagine what it took for these white boys to go beyond the sill and down the stoop into the streets. Lethem’s white boys, and that’s how he identifies them, as white boys, throughout the story, Lethem’s white boys remain nameless in their stony enclave of whiteness surrounded by black boys, needing the guidance of the exceptional black boy to guide them around Italian neighborhoods. Black boys, like the white boys, remain nameless. Thanks to Richard Wright, who wrote a two book autobiography, one book entitled Black Boy, black boy was once a commonplace descriptive in American speak. Critics pointed out Wright’s autobiography as sociological, a critique that could be hurled at Lethem’s white boy book. Lethem, borrowing techniques from non-fiction, breaks a cardinal rule of fiction writing, by telling instead of showing. Not to say authors before him haven’t crossed into the other territory. Norman Mailer, raised in Brooklyn, is credited for founding the literary school known as faction, the use of literary techniques in writing non-fiction. And for either show or tell, who better than Herman Melville who chose both, either and or, for his thoughts on whiteness.

For safe passage, tribute is demanded. Known to the white boys as mugger money. Their parents have told them that some people aren’t as well off as they are, so they provide their sons with mugger money, a daily ritual that becomes known as the dance, which even the black boys follow the moves in a pattern with what appears to be reluctance.

Lethem’s book feels nothing like fiction as his narrator searches like a hapless detective to find something, a style or a draft in search of a fictional genre, call it a crime if you will, something, anything, for rhyme or reason, that happened, the what and the why. Parts read like a rough draft or a sketch for some future project. Maybe with distance, the kind of distance that comes with age, seen from another neighborhood, from statistical reports, documentaries, or a different book of fiction—try a book by Dos Passos, Roth, Gorki or Gogol—will lend some sort of understanding to the overall picture. Not to say the narrator hasn’t worked those angles too but he didn’t get far.

With this one, Lethem, with audacity and brilliance, proves to be highly transgressive and fearless.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for an advanced copy

What a very unusual book. Written in very short vignettes, in language almost poetic, Jonathan Lethem has created a love story for Brooklyn. Addressing five decades of life in New York’s largest borough, Lethem looks lovingly and critically at gentrification, race relations, impinging cultures, poverty , affluence, crime, families, and daily life with all its triumphs and failures. Although each chapter is discrete, the interconnectedness of people and places is woven throughout. . No person unfamiliar with life in Brooklyn would be able to wrote so passionately. Vivid descriptive language makes the streets and inhabitants come alive on the pages of this incredible book. Four shining stars for an unforgettable story.
My thanks to NetGalley and publisher Harper Collins for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What a truly unusual book! Lethem weaves together snippets of lives in Brooklyn in the 70's. Many of the characters are nameless but you have no choice but to read on as their narratives are so compelling.

The novel is social commentary and historical there is a mystery sewn throughout. You have never read a story like this and you are not likely to forget it! You will continue to read making sense of the snippets and watch as the characters change and transform until it is hard to determine who are the good guys and who are the bad. Pick up this book and take an astounding trip to Dean Street Brooklyn!
#Ecco #BrooklynCrimeNovel #jonathanLethem

So-I expected this book to be right in my “ wheelhouse”- grew up in Queens , went to school in Brooklyn and many sections take place in a time period I am familiar with. That said I really struggled with this book.Found the story line too fragmented and just could not get into the writing style. Others may truly enjoy it but it just didn’t “ hit” me.I’ve enjoyed his earlier books but not this one. Anxious to read/ hear other opinions.

I love Jonathan Lethem’s work, and this book is very good. I was expecting another Motherless Brooklyn from the title alone, but I was pleasantly surprised when it wasn’t. The title is misleading but the story inside is an excellent view of Brooklyn and its inhabitants of Dean Street. The author goes back and forth between time and mostly nameless characters to incorporate a compelling story. Outside of the characters, the book reveals incredible observations of the neighborhood and the culture within.

I met the author years ago at a book signing and he was fantastic to his readers, so I’ll always be eager to read his work.

The book does not come out until later this year but thanks to @harpercollins allowing me to get an advance copy through @netgalley.
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#bookstagram #books #brooklyn #novel #fiction #readingisfundamental #BrooklynCrimeNovel #NetGalley #jonathanlethem #harpercollins #advancecopyreader

An unusual novel. A lot of metacommentary. Lethem is not going into the Philip K. Dick territory with this one, but making full use of his setting to satirize or conjure the aura of his setting. If you like Woody Allen, or stuff set in New York, or his work Motherless Brooklyn, you'll probably like this as well.

There's a reason why there's a giant photo of Jonathan Lethem on the wall in the reading room of the Brooklyn Public Library: he is one of the city's -- and the country's -- most celebrated and talented writers of city streets and what goes on in the shadows. As a former denizen of Dean Street myself, I can vouch for the authenticity of the voice here. Brooklyn may be motherless, but it's got Jonathan as a chronicler, which may be even more important.