Audiobook Download Information
- Edition:
- Unabridged (Random House Audio)
- Length:
- 18 hours, 34 minutes
- File Size:
- 510 MB (166 files)
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Summary
Dylan grows up in a black neighborhood in Brooklyn, the only white boy around. His hippie parents are oblivious, but his troubles in an all-black milieu are eased by his best friend, Mingus Rude, the son of a soul singer. As the boys grow up, Dylan moves away from his roots and goes off to college in Berkeley, while Mingus falls deep into crack and drug-dealing and ends up in jail. Throughout, the presence of a magic ring that allows its wearer to fly is a recurring motif in this close look at the insidious presence of racism in American life.
Quotes from the Critics
"It is a testament to [Lethem's] sheer verve as a writer and the acuity of his social and psychological observations that the novel as a whole manages to override [some] awkward interludes in which the hero and his best friend (as both children and adults) play at being superheroes, using a special ring to invoke magical powers of invisibility. Happily, the bulk of [the novel] avoids such cutesy pyrotechnics to focus on the story of Dylan Ebdus's coming of age....[I]t demonstrates that Mr. Lethem does not need the tricked-up narrative strategies of his earlier books to hold the reader's attention. More important, it attests to a new virtuosity on his part: an ability to conjure disparate worlds from Brooklyn to Berkeley to Hollywood with uncommon energy and skill, as well as an ability to map the bumpy terrain of childhood and adolescence with humor and compassion and seemingly total recall for the enthusiasms and humiliations of those years." - New York Times
"To say that Lethem bends the rules, pushes the envelope and extends the possibilities of fiction is to state only part of the case. He's defiant, delicious, in his refusal to be pinned...." - Salon
"[A] big, personal, sometimes breathtaking, and sometimes disappointing book....The opening section, Dylan's childhood, is some kind of miracle....[A] fine, rich, thoughtful novel from one of our best writers." - Kirkus
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