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The Fortress of Solitude
- Narrated by: David Aaron Baker
- Length: 18 hrs and 34 mins
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Publisher's Summary
This is the story of 1970s America, a time when the most simple human decisions - what music you listen to, whether to speak to the kid in the seat next to you, whether to give up your lunch money - are laden with potential political, social and racial disaster. This is the story of 1990s America, when no one cared anymore.
This is the story of punk, that easy white rebellion, and crack, that monstrous plague. This is the story of the loneliness of the avant-garde artist and the exuberance of the graffiti artist. This is the story of what would happen if two teenaged boys obsessed with comic book heroes actually had superpowers: They would screw up their lives.
This is the story of joyous afternoons of stickball and dreaded years of schoolyard extortion. This is the story of belonging to a society that doesn't accept you. This is the story of prison and of college, of Brooklyn and Berkeley, of soul and rap, of murder and redemption.
This is the story Jonathan Lethem was born to tell. This is The Fortress of Solitude.
Critic Reviews
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What listeners say about The Fortress of Solitude
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Jonathan
- 10-21-03
A smorgasbord of language
Some of the sentences in this book are so well crafted, they actually made me whisper "wow" outloud alone in my car.
I've phoned people to make them listen to a single passage.
The reader has it down pat.
This book isn't a thriller, and sometimes runs a little slow. This isn't a drawback as long as you don't go in expecting a rollercoaster. Listen to this book when you feel like contemplating life in general, and your own life specifically.
25 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Jana
- 11-25-03
Perfect! Maybe my favorite book ever
This book was fantastic, from the fascinating story to the fabulous writing (I agree with the previous reviewer who was so "wowed" by it), to the reader who managed to capture perfectly the wide range of voices and personalities of the characters. Even though there is some magic realism in the story, I found everything as believable as a memoir. This is a book I'm going to buy in hardcover and give for gifts this Christmas. I'm looking forward to my 23 and 28 year old sons reading it as so much describes their urban schools and the world and people they knew, including the graffiti painters, and the boys who went off into drugs and incarceration and the ones who survived, damaged or resilient, to grow up.
10 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Dale
- 04-01-04
Masterful writing (and reading)
Tackles the complexities of race relations honestly and adroitly, and celebrates the nearly narcotic effect of music and "musicology." Best of all, juxtaposes the relative innocence of the 70s versus the solipsism of subsequent decades. Other reviewers have pointed out the dexterity of the prose. Truly wondrous in spots. And the narration is the best I've come across since joining up, the reader attempting (and nailing) a wide range of dialects, races, ages, and temperments. And at 18 hours, a bargain.
5 people found this helpful
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Performance
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Story
- David Shear
- 08-08-13
So good until the last couple chapters
I loved this book and was totally invested in the characters and the story and all it's quirks. Then the story shifted dramatically for the last couple of chapters and I'm not sure why those chapters were even there. They felt duct taped on to the end of the story, they didn't fit, they didn't make much sense, they weren't interesting.
The book was still worth it. The layers of depth of this story and the characters were complex and interesting. I loved how often I found myself feeling so uncomfortable for the characters and really rooting for them. I really enjoyed the music theme throughout as well.
I recommend.
3 people found this helpful
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Performance
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Story
- Jeff Lacy
- 08-25-18
Curious and ponderous
Lethem, in The Fortress of Solitude, gives us an imaginative, ponderous story. Page after page of extraordinary writing, sensitive to the aspects of the characters, and viscerally distilled sentences parsed on a razor’s edge. The characters are painted boldly and move the plot authentically; very memorable characters. The audible performance is very good.
1 person found this helpful
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Performance
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- Amazon Customer
- 01-17-17
Growing up in Brooklyn/Autobiographical
I can't tell you the number of times I zoned out of this navel gazing tale, spanning three decades. Clearly this mirrors the author's life, but I found precious little to latch onto in terms of story. You probably have to be from NYC to understand because we Upstate rubes probably can't relate.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Alison
- 07-02-11
decent story, mediocre writing
The characters are sympathetic and the plot interesting, but the writing couldn't support it - it ended up feeling self-indulgent too often.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Patricia
- 12-06-03
Dynamic Writing
This book is the story of lives, written in a way that allows the listener to become 100% involved with each character. Each sentence is unique, the writing pure poetry. I can't stop listening.
1 person found this helpful
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Overall
- Noah
- 12-24-03
A Treasure!
I listened to this book a few months ago, yet it remains with me. I might even listen to it again as there are so many dimensions to Lethem's work. In addition to an interesting plot, the author presents rich information about growing up in Brooklyn, education, grafitti, music, prison life, and neighborhood development. Although it's a long listen, there is much magic in the content and the performance.
2 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- AFaceInTheCrowd
- 02-27-22
It’s not a novel, it’s a song
I liked this book by Johnathan Leitham even more than Motherless Brooklyn, the characters so vivid and the plot flowing steadily without gimmicks. But it may be that these qualities do not come so much from the novel itself but from an absolutely superb performance of the narrator. To my ear the voices are so true to the author’s descriptions, so flawless, recognizable and diverse that I cannot imagine this book in any other form, only as performed on this recording. Bravo, David Aaron Baker!