The Brooklyn beats scene

At more than 500 pages, Lethem's sixth novel never rewards either its scope or its ambition.

Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude are kids of the 1970s, best friends of different colour working it in downtown Brooklyn while skate culture, funk and hip hop, drugs and racial tension explode beneath their feet.

Through the complicated ebb and flow of their relationship, Lethem painstakingly reimagines the decade in which Brooklyn changed forever. Yet his vision is fatally nostalgic, with the curious fantasy element (a magic ring) constantly confusing the novel's over-arching commitment to social realism.