In many ways, a summa of Auster’s entire oeuvre, and a gripping and immensely satisfying novel in its own right.
Auster’s tenth novel is one of his finest: an elegant meditation on the question of whether an artist or his public “owns” the work he creates, and a thickly plotted succession of interlocking mysteries reminiscent of his highly praised New York Trilogy (The Locked Room, 1986, etc.).
Narrator David Zimmer is a professor of comparative literature at a small Vermont college with an impressive resumé and a promising academic future, until his wife and young sons perish in a 1985 plane crash. Following an extended period of drunken despair (eloquently and harrowingly described), Zimmer indulges a casual interest in obscure silent film comedian hector Mann, whose disappearance in 1929 has never been explained. David researches and writes a book about Mann’s films (occasioning several brilliant set pieces summarizing their contents), and in 1988 receives a letter from New Mexico informing him that Hector Mann is still alive, and is interested in meeting David. The novel picks up dizzying speed as that letter (ostensibly sent by Mann’s protective wife Frieda Spelling) is followed by the appearance of Alma Grund (a beautiful young woman despite a disfiguring facial birthmark), who brings David to the (now nonagenarian) Mann’s southwestern ranch, spins a lavish tale of scandal and self-exile that fills in a 60-year gap, and compulsively recapitulates the former comedian’s various fateful ordeals, leaving Zimmer once again bereaved and alone. The heavy excess of plot never feels arbitrary or contrived, because Auster (Timbuktu, 1999, etc.) writes with such persuasive directness about both Zimmer’s conflicted death-in-life and efforts to get beyond it, and Mann’s understandably buried past and quiet desperation to order and give meaning to—and eventually extinguish—his accident-strewn personal history. Further dimensions are added by Zimmer’s ironically thematically related intellectual pursuits, particularly his fascination with French writer Chateaubriand’s elusive, many-leveled autobiography.
In many ways, a summa of Auster’s entire oeuvre, and a gripping and immensely satisfying novel in its own right.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2002
ISBN: 0-8050-5408-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2002
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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