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Motherless Brooklyn audiobook cover art

  • Motherless Brooklyn

  • By: Jonathan Lethem
  • Narrated by: Geoffrey Cantor
  • Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars 368
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    4.5 out of 5 stars 335
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From America's most inventive novelist, Jonathan Lethem, comes this compelling and compulsive riff on the classic detective novel. Lionel Essrog is Brooklyn's very own Human Freakshow, an orphan whose Tourettic impulses drive him to bark, count, and rip apart language in startling and original ways. Together with three veterans of the St. Vincent's Home for Boys, he works for small-time mobster Frank Minna's limo service cum detective agency. Life without Frank, the charismatic King of Brooklyn, would be unimaginable.

  • 4 out of 5 stars

  • You're Not the Only Freak Show in Town!

  • By Dave on 05-01-14
The Fortress of Solitude audiobook cover art

  • The Fortress of Solitude

  • By: Jonathan Lethem
  • Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
  • Length: 18 hrs and 34 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars 318
  • Performance
    4.5 out of 5 stars 178
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    4 out of 5 stars 181

This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They are friends and neighbors, but because Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple. This is the story of their Brooklyn neighborhood, which is almost exclusively black despite the first whispers of something that will become known as "gentrification."

  • 5 out of 5 stars

  • A smorgasbord of language

  • By Jonathan on 10-21-03
A Gambler's Anatomy audiobook cover art

  • A Gambler's Anatomy

  • A Novel
  • By: Jonathan Lethem
  • Narrated by: Mark Deakins
  • Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    3.5 out of 5 stars 83
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars 78
  • Story
    3.5 out of 5 stars 79

Handsome, impeccably tuxedoed Bruno Alexander travels the world winning large sums of money from amateur "whales" who think they can challenge his peerless acumen at backgammon. Fronted by his pasty, vampiric manager, Edgar Falk, Bruno arrives in Berlin after a troubling run of bad luck in Singapore. Perhaps it was the chance encounter with his crass childhood acquaintance Keith Stolarsky and his smoldering girlfriend, Tira Harpaz. Or perhaps it was the emergence of a blot that distorts his vision so he has to look at the board sideways.

  • 4 out of 5 stars

  • Not Chabon's Best, wait no...Lethem's

  • By Darwin8u on 10-24-16
The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye audiobook cover art

  • The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

  • By: Jonathan Lethem
  • Narrated by: Graham Winton, Kevin R. Free
  • Length: 7 hrs and 19 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars 2
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars 2
  • Story
    4.5 out of 5 stars 2

And in "Forever, Said the Duck," stored computer personalities scheme to break free of their owners. In these and other stories in this striking collection, Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, draws the reader ever more deeply into his strange, unforgettable world - a trip from which there may be no easy return.

Girl in Landscape audiobook cover art

  • Girl in Landscape

  • By: Jonathan Lethem
  • Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
  • Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars 28
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars 21
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars 20

At the age of 13, Pella Marsh emigrates with her family to the Planet of the Archbuilders. These enigmatic aborigines have names like Lonely Dumptruck and Hiding Kneel, and a civilization that baffles and frightens their human visitors. As the spikily independent Pella becomes an uneasy envoy between two species, Girl in Landscape deftly interweaves themes of exploration and otherness, loss, and sexual awakening.

  • 1 out of 5 stars

  • Wonderful novel, horrendous audio book

  • By Grant Hayslip on 03-13-18
As She Climbed Across the Table audiobook cover art

  • As She Climbed Across the Table

  • By: Jonathan Lethem
  • Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
  • Length: 5 hrs and 43 mins
  • Unabridged
  • Overall
    3.5 out of 5 stars 62
  • Performance
    4.5 out of 5 stars 23
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars 25

Philip is in love with Alice. As the novel opens, he is beginning to lose her. Not to another man, as he fears, but to, literally, nothing. Alice is a physicist, and a team at the University where both she and Philip work has created a hole, a vacuum, a doorway of nothingness inside the laboratory. They call it "Lack". Alice becomes obsessed with Lack, as Philip is obsessed by Alice.

  • 2 out of 5 stars

  • Contender: Most Punchable Protagonist of the Year

  • By Joe on 08-10-16

Editorial Reviews

Jonathan Lethem's ambitious new book is a warped computer game, a Real Life alternate universe full of corridors and doorways that open up onto esoteric lore, secret histories, and quirky spins on reality — a warren where the narrative burrows down in increasingly irregular diversions. Its central concern is our perception of truth, and how that perception is molded by our obsession with celebrity, contemporary art, the obscure byways of the internet, and the hollowness at the heart of human relationships. Marauding tigers, meanwhile, bring chaos to the streets of Manhattan.

The central character is that ultimate has-been, the former child actor. He lives off residuals from an old TV show, and continues to act, in one way or another, as the celebrated fiancé of Janice Trumbull, a dying astronaut lost in space. Chase is locked into his own lonely orbit, a character written into the city's narrative as a recurring name in a slightly skewed but recognizable social scene. That is, until Perkus Tooth, a critic and conspiracy-theorist, enters his life, with his riffs on popular culture and obsession with — among many, many other things — transparent fetish objects called chauldrons.

Tooth is one of Mark Deakins' many memorable characterizations in this recording — he comes across as halfway between Bartleby the Scrivner and The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy. Deakins succeeds in painting each character with a light and unobtrusive touch, bringing life to characters that, on page, could easily appear as ciphers. Throughout Chronic City, reality is riddled through with simulation, and vice versa; Deakins' performance anchors the listener to some semblance of factuality, and makes us care enough to follow the narration through the shifting sands of authenticity. This is a universe where hacks and ghost writers create a "muppeteer's fiction", and it's thoroughly in keeping with Lethem's style that one of the more affecting parts of the book — Janice's letters back to Chase — turn out to be not quite what they seem. Nevertheless, Deakins delivers them without irony or ersatz sentimentality, and his integrity is of considerable benefit to the story.

Towards the end of Chronic City, Lethem's skill with language is finally matched with his control of the plot, and the two strands gel, bringing a sense of urgency to the quest for the real. —Dafydd Phillips

Publisher's Summary

The acclaimed author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude returns with a roar with this gorgeous, searing portrayal of Manhattanites wrapped in their own delusions, desires, and lies.

Chase Insteadman, a handsome, inoffensive fixture on Manhattan's social scene, lives off residuals earned as a child star on a beloved sitcom called Martyr & Pesty. Chase owes his current social cachet to an ongoing tragedy much covered in the tabloids: His teenage sweetheart and fiancée, Janice Trumbull, is trapped by a layer of low-orbit mines on the International Space Station, from which she sends him rapturous and heartbreaking love letters. Like Janice, Chase is adrift, she in Earth's stratosphere, he in a vague routine punctuated by Upper East Side dinner parties.

Into Chase's cloistered city enters Perkus Tooth, a wall-eyed free-range pop critic whose soaring conspiratorial riffs are fueled by high-grade marijuana, mammoth cheeseburgers, and a desperate ache for meaning. Perkus's countercultural savvy and voracious paranoia draw Chase into another Manhattan, where questions of what is real, what is fake, and who is complicit take on a life-shattering urgency.

Along with Oona Laszlo, a self-loathing ghostwriter, and Richard Abneg, a hero of the Tompkins Square Park riot now working as a fixer for the billionaire mayor, Chase and Perkus attempt to unearth the answers to several mysteries that seem to offer that rarest of artifacts on an island where everything can be bought: Truth.

Like Manhattan itself, Jonathan Lethem's masterpiece is beautiful and tawdry, tragic and forgiving, devastating and antic, a stand-in for the whole world and a place utterly unique.
©2009 Jonathan Lethem (P)2009 Random House

Critic Reviews

"Exquisitely written...Funny and mystifying, eminently quotable, resolutely difficult, even heartbreaking, Chronic City demonstrates an imaginative breadth not quite of this world." ( Cleveland Plain Dealer)
"Astonishing....Knowing and exuberant, with beautiful drunken sentences that somehow manage to walk a straight line.....Turbocharged....Intricate and seamless....A dancing showgirl of a novel, yet beneath the gaudy makeup it's also the girl next door: a traditional bildungsroman with a strong moral compass." ( New York Times Book Review)
"Exuberant literary revving.....Lethem's vision of New York can approach the Swiftian. It is impressively observant in its detail and scourging in its mocking satire. There are any number of wicked portraits....His comments on New York life are often achingly exact....So pungent and imaginative" ( The Boston Globe)

What members say

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Audible.com Reviews
Amazon Reviews
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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Bobby
  • El Paso, TX, United States
  • 01-21-11

Don't listen to the naysayers!

What's with the negative reviews? I loved this book, and I loved the performance. I felt at home in Lathem's imaginary world. Of course, I felt Chronic City, with its quirky adventures and bizzarro NYC, is more in sync with folks like Eileen Myles and Ted Berrigan and Patti Smith Perhaps than Jonathan Franzen's sad despairing FREEDOM riders. Oh well. For me I'm glad I didn't listen to the naysayers. I would have missed quite a ride. Or whatever it was.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A New Favorite

I read Lethem's article "The Ecstasy of Influence" for Harper's, and was very excited by the exploration of thought surrounding contemporary artistic appropriation, updating Howard Bloom. That article lead me here to "Chronic City." I wasn't disappointed. In fact, this has become one of my favorite audiobooks. The grand ideas woven into a fun narrative peppered with myriad obscure cultural references makes this is the kind of book that I find hugely satisfying.

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars
  • sgonk
  • New York, NY USA
  • 07-26-17

What is truth?

This book deals with the question of truth. It is told from a very specific perspective--an ex-child-actor-star living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan--but deals with a universal topic (assuming the universe cares about truth).

This is not a book for those looking for plot. It is about experiences, and is itself an interesting experience. Jonathan Letham has a great style that kept me interested in his words regardless of what they described.

Mark Deakins is a great narrator. He was able to create and maintain specific voices for each character, and obviously prepared well...he always had the right tone when reading dialogue, as opposed to some who, reaching the end of the dialogue, realize that the tone should have been sarcastic, tired, bored, etc. when they reach the end of the line.

This is a book that makes you (or at least me) think about it even weeks after finishing it. I'd probably rate it 4.5 if I could add half a star.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Very Original

This was a very refreshing bit of something completely new and different. I bit surreal, even. Motherless Brooklyn is one of my all time favorites. Lethem is brilliant with making topics in philosophy easy for the likes of you and me to ponder on by using quirky, brilliant, damaged or even ubernormal characters in his work. Really clever and fun.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

A Futuristic Look at Hipsters in Manhattan

What did you love best about Chronic City?

Excellent dialogue, great characters, and the interesting but obscure (probably to most?) pop-cultural references.

Who was your favorite character and why?

I didn't have one. I thought the characters were great overall but no particular stand-outs for me.

Which character – as performed by Mark Deakins – was your favorite?

I don't have a favorite here. I thought the characterization was strong overall.

If you could take any character from Chronic City out to dinner, who would it be and why?

I'd probably go with none. These are more the types of characters I would rather enjoy reading about than hanging out with.

Any additional comments?

'Chronic City'' is somewhat of a mysterious parallel vision of Manhattan's Upper East Side. The story is full of humor and is populated with a cast of young, off-beat, and exceptionally named characters. There's little in the way of narrative but it's a highly entertaining listen as the story is loaded with obscure film and pop culture references, a good deal of dry humor, a touch of science fiction, and strong dialogue. This is literary fiction, so it's not going to be for everyone, but for those seeking this type of mix it should be a fun listen.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Jackie
  • San Diego, CA, United States
  • 11-15-11

the boomer generation Bellow

This is an excellent performance rich with texture and nuance. I consider Lethem up there in the genre of one Saul Bellow. Boomer Bellow. Nice find.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Vivid and intelligently original

Lethem, with Chronin City, writes a vivid character driven story that is refreshingly original, intelligently witty and observant, tight and edgy dialogue, and with a strange theme that our lives are all about distractions, signified by the novel’s interweaving of a purported tiger lurking around New York City unseen, the news following the lives of astronauts stranded on the space station because of Chinese space mines, and the personal story of the former child actor, protagonist, Chase’s girlfriend Janice Trumbull being one of those astronauts. This is as much about an ensemble of character round Perkins Tooth, a former rock critic. who is obsessed by Marlon Brando, and chaldron (pottery) photo then hologram, that propels the plot and brings the story to its strange, almost conspiracy theory denouement. This is an engaging story with interesting characters that are appealing due to their eccentricities, foibles, backgrounds, obsessions.

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

When in doubt, don't.

This book got good and bad reviews. Believe the bad ones.

I rarely give up on an audiobook once I've paid for it, but with this one I'd rather listen to nothing. Pure unrelieved inanity. Sorry to say this, because I loved The Fortress of Solitude.

10 of 25 people found this review helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Not able to follow

I have 'read' a fair share of complex books, but this was simply uninteresting.

2 of 6 people found this review helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars

Straight at a Pot Party

Have you ever found yourself straight at a party where everyone else is stoned on pot? That's what reading Chronic City is like--figuratively . . . and literally since most of the characters ARE always stoned on pot? I left the party before it was over, disappointed because I so loved Lethem's accessible and genuinely insightful and funny _The Fortress of Solitude_. _Chronic City_ is an episodic novel about nothing, but not nearly as much fun or as clever or, despite its pretensions, as knowledgeable of New York as that masterpiece about nothing, _Seinfeld_.

2 of 8 people found this review helpful