Non-motherless, non-Brooklyn: Lethem's forthcoming novel

Obviously Jonathan Lethem's fiction piece in the current New Yorker is an excerpt from his forthcoming novel and not a story, so hard to judge it entirely as a stand-alone but it holds the promise of another fine novel from Lethem. The piece, The Gray Goose, written in his abundant, maximal style and full of the richness of New York City, especially in the 50s and 60s, and, in this case, what appear to be some new themes or emphases for Lethem: first, the story (I'll call it that for simplicity) is multi-borough, not the Brooklyn that he has staked out as his own. Much takes place in Manhattan (the Village in the 60s) and in Queens (a housing project that was, at least in this fiction, a utopian, leftist, politically active community - not sure if this is based on a real location or development - either way a nice touch and something most readers will not be familiar with); 2nd, the piece centers on a woman protagonist, Miriam, daughter of left-activist Jewish parents, the father from an old German-Jewish family and the mother, Rose, from an Eastern-European shtetl background - the two are a mismatch from the start, and the piece opens with the father leaving the marriage and embarking on activism in the war-ravaged Germany in the late 40s. Third, the piece is more overtly political than anything else I've read from Lethem - touches on the post-war communism, the 60s activism, the sexual freedom, the bohemian-beat culture, the red diaper babies - in his own way he covers a very wide territory in this relatively short piece and a long span of Miriam's life, from early childhood listening to a Burl Ives record (eponymous) to a late adolescence - in fact, the central action of this piece is one long night drinking and debauchery in which Miriam and a guy course through 3 boroughs and end up at her apartment where she awkwardly tries to lose her virginity - the scene ending when the mother bursts into the room and is in a sense torn between her leftist creed and her fear for her daughter's well-being (she herself entered the bad marriage because of an unplanned pregnancy) - in short, lots of material in this piece, Miriam a very promising character whom I expect will go through many episodes and conflicts over the course of the novel, and despite the abundance of incident the piece is easy to follow and full of beautiful moments: crossing the bridge into Brooklyn at night on foot, the subway in the early-morning hours into Queens, the streets at dawn. A good novel on the way, I think.