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Article: Chronic City.(Books)(Book review)
- Article from:
- The Christian Science Monitor
- Article date:
- October 25, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2009 The Christian Science Publishing Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Carlo Wolff
Jonathan Lethem concocts an often intoxicating but occasionally irritating fable of intellectual life in the Manhattan of the near future in Chronic City, his latest exploration of urban life. His language, as is often the case, is ravishing, but his painstaking characterization doesn't lead to figures worth caring about.
Despite surface sheen and an intermittently high entertainment quotient, "Chronic City" feels flaccid. While better than Lethem's overly schematic "The Fortress of Solitude," it lacks the zing of his "Motherless Brooklyn," the 1999 novel for which Lethem won the National Book Critics Circle award.
"Chronic ...