I’m using an amazon.com gift certificate, and I’ve had Lethem on my “wish list” for a while, and am now prepared to purchase my first novel by him.
Which shall it be?
Mostly, I’m looking at Gun with Occasional Music, or alternatively, As She Crawled Across the Table.
Which of these should I get? (I will only get one.) Or do you think there’s some other book by him I should get instead?
-FrL-
I still think “Gun, with Occasional Music” is his best.
Gun is a wonderful book - short, focused with a voice like The Maltese Falcon meets 1984.
Fortress of Solitude is much more ambitious and a bit harder to wrap your brain around.
Motherless Brooklyn strikes a balance - short and focused like Gun, but a bit more ambitious in scope.
I support going with Gun first, the MB then if you still like him, Fortress…
I third Gun.
I’ll fourth Gun, but Kitchen Table is pretty good, too.
Motherless Brooklyn, by far. His best novel.
But Gun out of the two you mentioned.
I liked *Girl in Landscape * and Amnesia Moon, myself. Also his collection Men and Cartoons. I thought Motherless Brooklyn was okay. The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye is on my “read soon” pile.