Rating: 
Summary: Yet Another Splendid Novel About Brooklyn From Lethem
Review: "The Fortress of Solitude" is ample confirmation for many of us who regard Jonathan Lethem as among the finest American novelists of our time. It is an engrossing, at times brilliant, evocation of Brooklyn, New York in the late 1970's and early 1980's. Lethem has successfully woven such themes as gentrification, black-white race relations, the rise of crack usage and rock and roll and soul music into a fine novel. While it may lack the sizzling energy and crackling prose of "Motherless Brooklyn" - which still is Lethem's crowning literary achievement - "The Fortress of Solitude" introduces us to yet another engrossing protagonist, Dylan Ebdus, who grows up in a Boerum Hill (downtown Brooklyn) that undergoes a startling transformation from rundown, almost blighted, urban slum to the newest, hippest outpost of urban gentrification. Ebdus matures from an insecure youth hanging out with local gangs to a promising writer of rock and roll and soul music. As an adolescent he strikes up a friendship with Mingus Rude, the troubled son of a down on his luck soul and rock and roll music singer. Together they seek escape from their urban prison through a magic ring which offers its possessor superhuman powers."The Fortress of Solitude" is by no means a perfect work of fiction, but it is still an engrossing tale of a young man - Dylan Ebdus - who finally finds his way in the world. The first two thirds are often captivating, replete with Lethem's brilliant, occasionally poetic, prose. The last third seems a bit rushed and contrived, as though Lethem was moving too fast to end this complex tale. At times Mingus Rude comes across as a more intriguing character than his friend Dylan, especially in the novel's final chapters. And his descriptions of Stuyvesant High School students seem a bit too far removed from what I remember back in the mid to late 1970's. But these are relatively minor criticisms of what I regard as one of Lethem's best works of fiction. One which I hope you, a fellow customer, will strongly agree.
Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars despite some quibbles
Review: I enjoyed the quirkiness of "Motherless Brooklyn" and found this book even more of a pleasure. The bulk of the text deals with the 70s and evokes much of that era in terms of mood, race relations, and music. The book also captures the atmosphere of a gentrifying neighborhood and the world of offspring of self-conciously outre' parents. The book is strongest in dealing with Dylan & Mingus' younger years. The prison section proceeds oddly and the very end seems like a "tack-on" drawing on themes from Lethem's other writing. Ditto Robert Woolfolk's death and the lame set-up. For someone whose main character is a music writer, there are odd errors like attributing a Supremes classic to Gladys Knight & the Pips. Also, any place with a Bloomington, Indiana Rural Route is unlikely to be even close to the interstate and the Kinsey Institute's creepiness (a likely byproduct of Hoosier repressiveness) would have helped set-up the oddity of the mother winding up in a southern Indiana commune (though such places existed). Bloomington hipsters are people too narrow and afraid to go some place like New York, and a Brooklyn kid would not have lasted very long there. Unlike other reviewers, I did not find the book particularly slow. Nor did I find it pretentious with regard to its subject matter. The book's lampoons of hipsters (of various stripes), self-indulgent parents, the insularity of Berkeley, the shallowness of music journalism, and the sliminess of real estate people are all on target. Yes, the last 40-50 pages could have re-written or even deleted, but the rest of the book is a great piece of fiction. It captures how how difficult it can be to escape our past and how we can overcome the most problematic of attachments. In a very naturalistic way, it also describes the fragility of race relations and manages to make a proto-slacker into a likable protagaonist.
Rating:
Summary: exceptionally good
Review: i finished johnathan lethem's "the fortress of solitude" today, and i'm trying to comprehend what he tried to pull off and if in fact he pulled it off. i don't think so, not completely, but he came damned close. the first 300 pages are near perfect, but the last 200, while hugely enjoyable and totally readable, wobble, especially the last 50, where lethem may have tried too hard. but god bless him for trying. and, as i said, he almost manages it. god bless him for that too. it is an amazing book in many ways, a junk drawer full of childhood memories, circa the mid- to late-1970s, specific to brooklyn but in many ways universal. it's a knowing, unblinking look at race relations and friendship and music (especially music!) and puberty and drugs and pretty much anything else you can name. the friendship between the white dylan (a product of liberal guilt) and the black mingus (a product of the streets that liberal guilt could never fix) is heartbreaking and feels right and real. the language is straightforward except when it's startlingly poetic, but still absolutely right, not flashy, not a conceit. but, amid all the grime and the crime and the growing-up stuff in the book's first half and the remembering and the regret and the emotional paralysis in its second half, there is a subplot that at first i couldn't accept that lethem meant to be taken at face value. yet there it was, with no apologies. we are asked to believe that over the course of 30 years, the boys, mad about comic books in their youth, share possession of a ring that allows them, sort of, to first fly like a superhero, then, more successfully, to disappear. try as i might to convince myself these were purely symbolic acts, i finally had to accept the fact that people do fly here, in brooklyn and beyond, except when they don't, crash-landing with varying, ultimately lethal results. it doesn't quite work in the final analysis. but it comes oh-so-close. and in a way the "failure" doesn't matter. the first two-thirds of "the fortress of solitude" are so spectacularly, achingly successful that nothing that could happen in the final third - which also is very strong despite the unexpected aeronautics - would make this anything other than an exceptionally good, okay great - there i've said it - novel. i recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: Trying too hard
Review: I loved Motherless Brooklyn. And I thoroughly enjoyed Gun, With Occasional Music and As She Climbed Across the Table. I had high hopes for Fortress of Solitude, especially because of critics' comparisons with Kavalier & Klay.
However, excruciating detail is not a substitute for plot or, more importantly, character development. Unlike Lionel Essrog (of Motherless Brooklyn) or even the "Lack" (of As She Climbed Across the Table), Dylan Ebdus is nothing but a sieve for long-winded overwrought descriptions of 1970s Brooklyn.
Fortress of Solitude is, put simply, obsessively overwritten.
Rating: 
Summary: A step forward for Lethem
Review: I thought Motherless Brooklyn was one of the most overrated books of the last couple years, so this book came as a pleasant surprise.
Fans of Lethem's zany genre fiction might do well to look elsewhere, as he dispenses with the flat, ungrounded characterizations and contrived plot of MB and delivers an honest, vivid, and meditative coming of age tale. Other reviewers have complained that the book lacks structure, but hey, so does life, and what the novel lacks in conflict and suspense it makes up for in its faithful, regretful depiction of a now-vanished urban milieu. The black characters in the novel don't quite come alive for me, through a failure of omission rather than any particularly wrong notes struck. Similarly, the adult Dylan of the second half of the book is something of a cipher.
All in all though, a moving account of a young person's failures to make human connections across racial and cultural barriers.
Rating: 
Summary: A mighty but flawed dirge
Review: I'm in two minds about this book. On the one hand I'm conflicted about the novel's style and structure, yet on the other hand I'm in absolute awe of its enormous scope and passion. Fortress of Solitude was just far too over embellished with detail and Lethem's style just seemed out of control. Lethem really needed a good editor to ferret out some of the more long-winded passages, rein his style in, and condense the novel to a more sensible length. Much of Fortress of Solitude is satisfactory for its insight into the sights and sounds of Brooklyn in the 1970's, yet its also frustrating in its intensity. Lethem writes as though he is obsessed with some "Joycean" like force, as though he can't wait to splurge and gorge any thought he ever had onto the printed page. He has a kind of bold, confrontational style, but his work reads like a clunky, turgid school report from his youth. The real star of this book is not Dylan Ebdus or Mingus Rude but the world that they inhabit. Dean Street in the Seventies is a world teetering in the edge - drugs are rife, the yuppies are moving in, gang life proliferates, and a sense of economic decline permeates the area. To is credit, Lethem's descriptions of Dean Street are good - the oil stained body shops and forlorn graffitied warehouses, the sprays of broken glass on the side walks, the Puerto Ricans, the images of the dilapidated brownstones, and the liquor stores. This, after all, is the Seventies and Lethem, to his credit infuses his narrative with references to pop culture - the movie Logan's Run, Star Trek, disco hits, cocaine, and the grooviest pop groups. Lethem periodically intersperses the narrative with pop songs of the period, as the story gradually moves forward into the 80's and 90's. The main problem that I found with this novel is that Lethem never really allows us access to the main characters' inner thoughts. We have some wonderful descriptions of time and place - but I never got the sense that the author was privileging us to what Mingus, Dylan and Arthur were actually thinking, and this is also true of many of the secondary characters. The reader is constantly the observer on in this novel, always on the outside and at all times looking in. On the positive side, Lethem has a good ear for recreating natural conversation and portrays rather adroitly the particular black inflections of the period. But generally though, I found this novel to be a big disappointment, and an over the top, shoddy, and slapdash mess. Fortress of Solitude is all over the place, which is a pity, because Lethem has much passion and zeal as a writer. Michael
Rating:
Summary: Loved It!
Review: If you liked "Atonement" (four stars) or "My Fractured Life" (five stars) then you will like "The Fortress of Solitude" (five stars). I personally loved this book.
Rating:
Summary: Though a bit slow at times, this is a compelling read
Review: Jonathan Lethem loves language and it shows. Writers who use beautiful descriptions and show a deep understanding of words can make any story more interesting. This is certainly true of THE FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE. While the book seemed slow and too deliberate in some places, the author's skill kept me reading. Lethem's MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN might deserve the description tour de force, and GUN, WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC showed lots of imagination. I'm usually not interested in stories of boys growing up, but Lethem made me pay attention to this one. There are reminders here of everything from THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY by Michael Chabon to Steve Kluger's LAST DAYS OF SUMMER --- about growing up in New York in the '50s, '60s and '70s, friendships, and figuring out the codes of childhood. We meet Dylan Ebdus, who is adored by his mother, at the age of five. Unfortunately the mother, a potentially major character, leaves the scene fairly early in the book. Alexander Ebdus, Dylan's father, is a slightly obsessed artist who for a long time never seems to know he has a son who could use his attention. Alexander ends up as a cover artist for science fiction paperbacks, which makes him more interesting to me --- in part because, while there is no Hugo for "Best New Artist," an award Alexander wins, I'm very familiar with the Hugo Awards and there is even one in my house (though it's not mine). Dylan seems to slide through much of life. Mingus, the aware hip black kid, befriends him. This takes courage --- Dylan doesn't have anything unique to offer, and in their neighborhood in Brooklyn, black kids have the edge on things that are hip and cool. Time and again, their friendship saves Dylan from uncomfortable situations. He soon develops an odd fascination with becoming a superhero, taken over by Mingus; it's a strong subplot that gives a slightly otherworldly feel to this otherwise straightforward story. Lethem does a very nice job of mixing the real world with his imaginary one. I often stopped to try to remember a record, an event, or a school before realizing that that one wasn't real. There are markers along the way of musical and political events. I thought Lethem's markers of funk music and graffiti tagging were a little too superficial in the scheme of black and white differences in the last fifty years. This isn't to say that Lethem's story is stereotypical. However, Dylan succeeds while Mingus is doomed; Dylan is encouraged to go to a magnet high school (even as his father seems oblivious to it all), but Mingus slides by and falls into drugs and oblivion, in no small part thanks to his father's drug habits. When Lethem writes at his best, he takes you completely into his fictional world. The "Liner Notes" section, which brings you up-to-date, is wonderfully written, albeit too long. But you believe you heard all those R&B and soul songs that Barrett Rude Jr. sang with "The Subtle Distinctions" (I love that name). However, I never quite got a handle on Dylan. I saw much of him through a scrim, never quite connecting. Dylan doesn't seem to develop much definition over the years. He has few passions or strong beliefs. I was compelled to read every beautifully written word, although I don't think I've ever met a character who seemed so lost about his life. The book trails off at the end, confused like its main character. I read all 450 plus pages in two days. I'm just not completely sure why. --- Reviewed by Andi Shechter
Rating:
Summary: Well Written, but nothing special
Review: Jonathan Lethem writes exceptionally well, creates intricate, believable, and sympathetic characters. He paints scenarios and dialogue that have the effect of bringing the reader into his world and even enabling the reader to claim a stake in the outcome.
On the other hand, in "Fortress of Solitude", the story, where there is one, develops slowly and begrudgingly. At times I was unable to identify what the book was really even about. The answer--what the book is about--is buried in touching chapters that invoke themes of racial unity and strife, broken homes, gentrification in 1970s inner city Brooklyn, and one boy's struggle to escape his internal and external demons.
Then there were other sub-plots, fanciful digressions into superhero status and inhuman feats of vigilantism that quite frankly did more to disinterest and confuse me than to engage my imagination.
While I wouldn't recommend this book, I can concede that ultimately I don't regret investing time into it.
Rating:
Summary: A Blossoming Friendship in Brooklyn
Review: Jonathan Lethem's FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE is a graceful and lyrical look at the friendship between two boys, Dylan and Mingus who are, respectively, white and black. A radical departure from MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN in tone, FORTRESS examines not only the effects the two boys have on each other but how those internal ties begin to be eroded by the other main character of the book, Brooklyn. As the neighborhood around the boys changes, especially in terms of racial composition, so do they, in often very tragic ways. I think Lethem has broken new ground here for himself, and I hope he continues along this path. Pick up this book and discover a talented writer who just keeps getting better.
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