Books we like ... and books we're not too fussed about
Paul Auster
Faber 2005
Paul Auster’s novels are striking in two ways: they don’t stick to the rules – they diverge and digress, we are reminded that it is all just a story – and they involve the reader completely. In the end, after the post-modern japes and self-referential cleverness, it’s the latter I really value: he is a brilliant story-teller. In this, his most recent novel, the story is very much to the fore. By the kind of outrageous coincidence (“the music of chance”) which propels much of his work, Nathan, in remission from lung cancer, divorced and estranged from his daughter, meets up again with his nephew Tom, a failed academic, in a second-hand bookstore in Brooklyn. There are the usual digressions and diversions (notably the story of the bookstore owner, Harry Brightman and the convoluted route his life has taken), and a book-within-a-book (The Book of Human Folly: Nathan’s account of “every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I have ever committed during my long and checkered career as a man”) which will be familiar to Auster’s regular readers. But what really shines through is his sparse, clear prose, and the involving story of the arrival of the mute nine-and-a-half-year-old Lucy, Tom’s sister Aurora’s daughter. How they find Aurora and what happens after forms the basis of the rest of the novel, but I won’t spoil things by revealing what happens. In any case, as with much of Auster’s work, it might well look a bit daft in summary. Nor will I reveal the ending, the final twist of fate, the worst horror of all. But what I will say is that, if you enjoy good writing, an involving story, and a little bit of post-modern trickery which (usually) stays on just about the right side of pretentiousness, Auster’s your man.
http://www.paulauster.co.uk
January 2006
See also: Sunset Park; Invisible; Man in the Dark
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