BROOKLYN CRIME NOVEL by Jonathan Lethem

Novels like this, especially with “Novel” in the title, should come with a disclaimer stating that its format is atypical.  Like Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, this book has no plot per se but is a series of vignettes.  It does have a bunch of characters, none of whom have proper names, and keeping them organized in my brain was impossible, since all the stories are shaken up and dealt piecemeal throughout the book.  On the plus side, this book takes a nostalgic look at a Brooklyn childhood in the midst of gentrification, despite everyday muggings.  Surprisingly, the muggers described here are mostly not adults, and weapons may be fictitious.  Mothers send their children out into the world with money hidden in their socks and “mugging money” in their pockets to appease the muggers. The problem is that snippets of narrative jump back and forth in time so that characters appear and then don’t appear again until much later.  The ambience that the author generates is vivid, and there’s a whole section on funny muggings, which morph into non-muggings in which the intended victim ingeniously thwarts the muggers.  On the flip side, we have a violent rape and a fake rape, but both the rapist and his non-raping ally have to face consequences.  Life is definitely not fair in this setting, but the author implies that Giuliani’s subsequent “stop and frisk” policy was not necessarily an improvement.