A multicultural microcosm: Brooklyn Crime Novel, by Jonathan Lethem, reviewed

Would readers approaching this novel (although novel might not be precisely the right word) without any indication as to the authorship recognise it as the work of Jonathan Lethem? It doesn’t have kangaroo gangsters packing heat, or sentient miniature black holes, or marine drills converted into nuclear-powered limos. It is not set on an alien planet, or in a parallel universe, or inside a simulated game. There are a few hints. It is set in Brooklyn and has a vaguely geeky feel to it; but tonally it seems very different to Motherless Brooklyn or The Fortress of Solitude. Instead of vernal exuberance there is autumnal wistfulness, but certainly not sentimentality. It opens with two boys engaged in chopping quarters into quarters for no apparent reason except that it is summer and ‘everything will be nothing like what it was ever again’. By the end, this ‘superbly pointless thing’ does have a function, but takes a roundabout route to reach it.