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The 2005 Award

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem


 

 

Nominated by:

  • Houston Public Library, USA
  • Milwaukee Public Library, USA
  • Miami-Dade Public Library System, USA

 

Publisher of Nominated Edition:
Doubleday ISBN 0385500696

 

the complete A-Z listing of nominated authors
ABOUT THE BOOK

This is the story of two boys, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude. They are friends and neighbours, but because Dylan is white and Mingus is black, their friendship is not simple. This is the story of their Brooklyn neighbourhood, which is almost exclusively black despite the first whispers of something that will become known as "gentrification."
This is the story of 1970s America, a time when the simplest human decisions - which 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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JONATHAN LETHEM is the author of five novels, including Motherless Brooklyn which won The National Book Critics Circle Award. He is also the author of the story collection, The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye and the novella This Shape We're In. His writings have appeared in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, McSweeney's, and many other periodicals. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.


Reader Reviews
This is a story of friendship and loyalty between two boys, Dylan Ebdus (white) and Mingus Rude (black) in urban Brooklyn in the 1970s which comes full circle in the 1990s bringing them together again. Their milieu is Dean Street, a street of brownstone houses whose new inhabitants hope to preserve its old character as well as trying optimistically to create a new social environment of black and white integration. But the real world of casual urban violence is all around, best exemplified by Dylan's daily journey to and from school, fraught with the danger of a form of mugging called yoking and the need to arm himself with a dollar to appease his tormenters. The bond between Dylan and Mingus somehow survives and thrives despite their disparate backgrounds, Dylan's father is a reclusive, monk-like artist while Mingus's father is an ex rock star (both mothers have abandoned ship). Mingus, a year older than Dylan is something of a heroic figure to Dylan and indeed he has saved him at critical moments.
Even though the book is full of American urban argot and overladen with rock/drug culture references, most of which rolled over me, I still wanted to read on. Perhaps its real pull is that you care about the characters, whether they can survive their chaotic urban world without being permanently damaged. Although the book is overlong (some 500 pages) and has self-indulgent passages about rock music and groups (which was which!) I found it quite compulsive. The real test of any author is whether you want to read more of his work and I definitely would. Rating 8-9 out of 10

Reader: Raheny Library Reading Group, Dublin, Ireland

 

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