Tuesday, April 26, 2005
book nineteen
The Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem
I still don't know what to make of this book. I picked it up because I've read some of Lethem's lighter works, like Gun, With Occasional Music and Amnesia Moon. The Fortress of Solitude was quite different, though - for most of the novel, there are no elements of science fiction or the supernatural.
The main character of the book is Dylan Ebdus, the son of white hippies who move into a gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn. Virtually all of the other kids in the neighborhood are black or Latino, and Dylan endures a lot of teasing and bullying. When he is still in grade school, his mother abandons Dylan and his father, only reappearing in strange postcards that Dylan receives sporadically for years.
Dylan makes friends with a new kid in the neighborhood, a mixed-race boy named Mingus who is the son of a washed-up soul singer. They initially spend a lot of time together, reading comics, tagging every available surface with graffiti, and so on... but over time they drift apart as Mingus gets into drugs and dealing, and Dylan is accepted to a prestigious high school and then college.
Then, the book takes an abrupt jump into the future, and it is revealed that there is a supernatural element after all, which I had assumed was only in the imagination of the young boys.
Overall, I'm just not sure what to make of the whole book. It is very well written, and very evocative of a certain place and time (Brooklyn in the 70s)... but I had trouble identifying with or even liking any of the characters, which made reading the book feel like a slog. I'm going to try again - I have Motherless Brooklyn on hold at the library.
by Jonathan Lethem
I still don't know what to make of this book. I picked it up because I've read some of Lethem's lighter works, like Gun, With Occasional Music and Amnesia Moon. The Fortress of Solitude was quite different, though - for most of the novel, there are no elements of science fiction or the supernatural.
The main character of the book is Dylan Ebdus, the son of white hippies who move into a gentrifying neighborhood in Brooklyn. Virtually all of the other kids in the neighborhood are black or Latino, and Dylan endures a lot of teasing and bullying. When he is still in grade school, his mother abandons Dylan and his father, only reappearing in strange postcards that Dylan receives sporadically for years.
Dylan makes friends with a new kid in the neighborhood, a mixed-race boy named Mingus who is the son of a washed-up soul singer. They initially spend a lot of time together, reading comics, tagging every available surface with graffiti, and so on... but over time they drift apart as Mingus gets into drugs and dealing, and Dylan is accepted to a prestigious high school and then college.
Then, the book takes an abrupt jump into the future, and it is revealed that there is a supernatural element after all, which I had assumed was only in the imagination of the young boys.
Overall, I'm just not sure what to make of the whole book. It is very well written, and very evocative of a certain place and time (Brooklyn in the 70s)... but I had trouble identifying with or even liking any of the characters, which made reading the book feel like a slog. I'm going to try again - I have Motherless Brooklyn on hold at the library.
Labels: book reports, science fiction
