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Title: poor writing - warning, spoilers
Review: Just finished Motherless Brooklyn - rudderless bookthin! brotherfist chagrin! - and find myself disappointed enough to throw the book across the table. The verbal tics - perturbingshticks! - served as no more than distractions, certainly had no point in the plot. Speaking of plot, there wasn't a single development that I didn't foresee (well OK, the Julia part), and the pieces that might actually have been interesting (like whether the Polish guy existed and what Bailey represented) were never resolved. Took Lethem about 70 pages to get going, and petered out about 50 pages before the end, when he simply uncovered all the "mystery" in one long narrative chapter. How dull. What serious writer ends a book with "Make like a tree and leave. Tell your story walking."? Lethem is supposedly an accomplished writer. If so, he can do better than this - Betterwish! Letterbliss!
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