Book Discussion Series Takes Up Motherless Brooklyn

The Haverhill Corner Library’s book discussion series “Are They Mysteries?” will continue Monday, April 19, with a discussion of Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. Motherless Brooklyn won the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction.

The discussion will be held at the library at 7:00 PM and will be free and open to the public. Copies of the book are available to borrow from the library in advance of the discussion.

Motherless Brooklyn opens dramatically with a stakeout that leads to abduction and murder. Lionel Essrog, afflicted with Tourette syndrome and now bereft of the father-figure who had given structure and purpose to his life, resolves to investigate the death of his boss, Frank Minna. That investigation, propelled by Lionel’s compulsive behaviors and verbal tics, will take him from Brooklyn to Manhattan to the coast of Maine and back again.

Motherless Brooklyn was hailed by Esquire magazine as “the best novel of the year . . . utterly original and deeply moving,” while USA Today called it, “funny and sly, clever, compelling, and endearing.”

“Under the guise of a detective novel, Lethem has written a more piercing tale of investigation, one revealing how the mind drives on its own ‘wheels within wheels,’” said the New York Times; “Motherless Brooklyn immerses us in the mind’s dense thicket, a place where words split and twine in an ever-deepening tangle.”

Jonathan Lethem is the author of seven other novels, including The Fortress of Solitude and Chronic City, as well as of numerous stories and essays. He received a MacArthur Fellowship (aka “genius award”) in 2005. He lives in Brooklyn, New York and Maine.

The “Are They Mysteries?” discussion series features books by literary writers working in the crime or mystery genre. Meetings are held on the third Monday of the month through June, and the final two sessions will feature works by China Miéville and Thomas Pynchon.

Copies of all books are available to borrow from the Haverhill Corner Library thanks to support from the New Hampshire Humanities Council and the Woodsville Book Store.