I just this minute finished Fortress of Solitude. I liked the second half of the book much better than the first.

I agree with Peter, the first part of the book does feel really familiar. It was interesting, but also awful. I really dislike the micro-examination of a person's own self. I think it's tremendously boring and usually unimportant. I'm not saying that a person isn't allowed to reflect (an unexamined life is supposedly not worth living, after all), but a novel-length meditation on stoopball, graffiti, and comic book characters isn't my idea of profound. Everybody had a childhood. Every adult has little talismans from that childhood. I really don't get the relentless need to explore that stuff. Maybe I just had a super boring childhood, but it to me it seems like on some level that kind of writing is the same thing as I Love the 80s.

But the prose itself I liked. Lethem did a really good job of putting you right inside his protagonist, I thought. You definitely feel like you know him, although the half dozen or so members of the supporting cast in this book weren't really fleshed out, and seemed like they served mostly to illuminate Dylan's personality. We got a pretty thorough back story for Barry in those liner notes, but that was about it. What was Robert like when he wasn't yoking someone? How did Arthur and his mom interact after he turned crazy? I especially would have liked to know more about Abraham, because I thought he, as the silent, looming hermit upstairs, was one of the most interesting characters in the book.

So yeah. I liked how he wrote, just not really what he wrote about. Overall though, the book was enjoyable and I would probably read another by the same author.