On the whole I was full of admiration for Lethem’s wordsmithery. Sometimes he can make you see the familiar in a new and searing light other times he has a tendency perhaps to over paint his canvases so detail is obscured in overly mannered intricacies of imagery. Whether you love or hate this novel will depend largely on whether or not you warm to Lethem’s virtuoso highly detailed prose style. Dylan’s safety in the largely hostile black neighbourhood is constantly menaced though his friendship with the streetwise Mingus offers solace and even a little protection. Both are brought up by maverick fathers on the same street in the 1970s. Both Dylan and Mingus have been abandoned by their mothers. Ironically the impoverished Brooklyn neighbourhood where they live does grow up, does become a responsible adult: by the time Dylan is in his thirties, it has become gentrified. It might be deemed a coming of age novel except its two central characters, Dylan (white) and Mingus (black), whom we meet when they are both twelve, never grow up even though by the end of the novel they are both in their thirties. Fortress of Solitude depicts a world in which there is no such thing as a responsible adult.
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