Fortress of Solitude
by Jonathan Lethem

My streak of serendipitously finding ever-better novels is over. This was good, but not great. It starts slow, bogged down in the main character's childhood, like many biographies I've started and not finished.

But it picks up as the character matures, ventures off his home block in Brooklyn, starts tagging, smoking weed, and playing superhero. From reading the book jackets, all of Lethem's other books seem to have incredibly weird aspects; this one has a touch of strangeness, but it's not central, which was a bit disappointing to me.

More stuff:

• Two reviews from the Guardian (London): +/–


• A Powell's bookstore interview with Lethem after publication of Fortress. Link