Rating: 
Summary: silence, comedy and tragedy
Review: This book may not be the masterpiece that I (and other Auster fans) have been hoping for, but it's still a great book. Auster in his sleep can write circles around most of today's fiction writers. In this latest novel, he creates a dreamy world that--while not the "real" of work, eat, play, sleep--is still plausible and definitely captivating. Like a lot of Auster's work, this novel mixes equal doses of humor and tragedy. If you like your comedy doused with liberal amounts of melodrama (and vice versa) this is a book to savor.
Rating:
Summary: Variations
Review: All of Auster's familiar themes of fate, the inscrutability of coincidence, the shortcomings of language, and the duplicity of man are on full display in his latest novel. They are sewn together expertly into an engaging and compelling narrative that is as elaborate and intriguing as anything he has ever written. There is an expert hand at work here and it is hard not to admire the deft skill with which disparate themes, voices and plotlines are elegantly woven together. Still, Auster's latest work somehow feels like a rough draft of sorts and his words do not have anywhere near the grace and cohesiveness of some of his earlier work such as 'City of Glass' and 'Moon Palace.' As the New York Times Book Review states, 'It feels messy without being quite human.' In the end, however, 'The Book of Illusions' is still well worth the read and the superbly taut last pages helps one to overlook any misgivings one might have about the flaws in the novel.
Rating: 
Summary: After reading the last page, I turned back to the first.
Review: Emotionally resonant and intellectually fulfilling, this is probably the most beautiful, fully realized novel of Paul Auster's career. It's sort of like U2's latest album: a masterpiece with heart. Anyway, this is the kind of fiction that today's new writers just can't seem to pull off. The novel contains a metafictional element that is much more interesting than any overtly "postmodern" novel of the last few years, but also infinitely more subtle--any musings on the "nature of narrative" or storytelling are in full service of the plot, which is hopeful and tragic at the same time. Comparisons could be made to Denis Johnson's "The Name of the World," with Auster actually realizing what Johnson attempted. Line by line, the prose of this book is pitch-perfect. Anyone disappointed by recent Auster efforts should be pleased by this return to (top) form.
Rating:
Summary: Weirdly compelling...
Review: Paul Auster's way of narration renders the story of "the book of illusions" simultaneously real and fictitious; things are bent just enough to play with the emotions of the reader. For instance, the plot elements of "the book of illusions" are quite ordinary but there's always an element of distance, of rejection. A plane accident leaves a man widowed; in grief his focus is limited to the silent movies of an elusive film director/actor; this focus turns into an obsession where nary a thought is given to the missing family. This is similar to Janet Leigh's character's death only minutes into the movie "Psycho," except that somewhat further into "the book of illusions" it's as if the family had never existed! This rejection of conventional narration underscores the main character's personality, and makes for a wonderfully twisted way of exposition! In parallel, the mysterious film director/actor creates movies and then vanishes, seemingly condemning his own work à la Tolstoy. And by having the protagonist, David Zimmer, seek to bond with the elusive Hector Mann the themes of obsession and effacement are magnified. In effect, even the title of the book humorously projects its main theme: the primary narrative weight of "the book of illusions" is illusionary. Recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing fare from a great writer
Review: How can the same man who wrote great books like THE MUSIC OF CHANCE, MOON PALACE, THE NEW YORK TRILOGY, and LEVIATHAN write flat-on-their-face disappointments like MR. VERTIGO and THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS? It's like watching a great juggler drop his balls: you're embarrassed for him and just pray for the act to end.The plot here is contrived, the descriptions of the lost movies are endless (admirably painstaking, but not much fun to read), the dialogue is dreadful, and nowhere to be found is the frisson of delight you normally get from an Auster novel by way of the author's ingenious revelations and dislocating insights. This book feels like an undergrad trying to 'do' Paul Auster: it's a pale and disappointing pastiche of the great man's style.
Rating: 
Summary: Ends abrupt-- Auster gave up. Good nonetheless
Review: I really got into the character building Auster did. The book moved smoothly and creatively. The reader at no point was lost in what Auster was working with. The suspense, characterization, and format was amazing-- once of the best... until the last 50 pages. It seemed that either Auster did not want to make the book super long so he wrapped it up really quickly or he didn't know how to end the book. Because the book is so smooth through the transitions of time and the progession of time, the abrupt end and wrap up seemed out of place for me. It seems displaced in comparison to the rest of the book. I was thoroughly disappointed with the ending, everything else was absolutely amazing.
Rating:
Summary: Dancing about architecture - a decent read with a few holes
Review: There were some really gripping bits of this novel. The characters are consitently, coherently drawn, it does a good job slipping back and forth between time and place, and it manages to create suspense and drama from a fairly understated story line. I particularly like the physicality of the descriptions. I really got a sense for what nealry all the characters looked and sounded like. And they all stayed in character - there weren't departures from character to scoot the plot along. However, it fell short it two fairly glaring areas for me. 1) The romance elements are barely plausible. They struck me as middle-school melodramatic. People sort of pop from indifference into world-shattering love, and stay in puppy-dog devotion until circumstances tear them apart. 2) The attempt to discribe brilliant cinema fell so far short as to be almost comic in its attempt. Writing about visual art is really hard to do, and I respect the ambition of giving it a go here. Any description, even a good one, leaves you with a pretty thin shadow of the real thing, so no fault of Auster's that this is short of compelling. But this particular part of the book goes past the forgivable and into the groan-out-loud bad. Hard to say more without a spoiler here, but let me just say that I'm very glad that Auster is writer and not a film maker. This was at the low end of a 4 star read for me. Lose the pretention, make the characters as real in their relations to each other as they are in their thoughts and actions, and leave brilliant films to the imagination, and it would have been a really notable read. As it is, its a solidly crafted, middle of the road, enjoyable but forgettable book.
Rating:
Summary: Suggest Audio Rather than Book
Review: I agree with all the 4 and 5 star reviewers and won't repeat their cogent remarks about the story itself. I only add that I heard this book rather than read it, and think Paul Auster's gravely, sonorous voice adds greatly to the atmospherics of this roller coaster ride of a story.
Of course this is subjective, but to me he has that mesmerizing combination of voice and intonation that pulls you in, similar to Garrison Keillor and Maya Angelou; any of whom could hold an audience reading the phone book.
Over the course of 2 weeks, I actually looked forward to commuting to work with Illusions running through my mind.
Rating:
Summary: Someone Needs to Be the Contrarian.
Review: I read this nearly a year ago, so it's not fresh in my mind. BUT --
I love Auster. I love his stories about coincidence. Sometimes they're quite lovely and musical.
This book just didn't click with me. Can't really explain why. I didn't feel like there were any surprises, and the ending was maudlin in melodramatic in a way that was *probably* supposed to echo silent film storylines, but which to me just fell flat. I don't think you can tell a story in symbols and parallelism; I think you have to tell it with guts and feeling. I didn't feel the gutt or feeling in this novel. But that won't stop me from going on to read his other works. I'm eternally the optimist...
(This was a book club selection for me... I might not have bought it if I'd had to pay full price.)
Rating:
Summary: Stuck
Review: While this book, like most books by Auster, are easy to read, and flow smoothly, this one has two drawbacks that his more recent books have fallen in to: 1. he seems to have to present you with every last thought (the example of his publishing his notebooks is an example of this); and many of the movie synopses that are presented in this book appear as such-- Auster's list of all the ideas that he thinks are good ideas that he wrote down, and he wants to read every one off to you, and 2) and this is the bigger one-- Auster is clearly not a struggling starving artist (as he wrote about with nostalgia a few years back). This is an enormously popular author, with money in the bank, a beautiful family and home, and adoring fans.... he is not the ravaged deprived soul he enjoys writing about... and what happens in the process, is that the ravaged, lost, deprived, cast off souls that he writes about come out as a well-fed man's fantasies about such a creature. He writes about taking Xanax as if it were LSD-- one pill and the character's out cold, and can't remember a thing. Maybe this would happen for a person who's got zero need for a drug. The realities of the drugs for those who in reality are circling the bottom of life (like the characters he images are doing as well) might well see this rendition as the fantasy of a man who' doesn't know the struggle of despair and debilitating depression. Likewise, the character he paints , who is so overcome with grief, is described in his day to day meanderings, in detail-- but those details are again devoid of the realities of the state of mental anguish Auster seems to see in a romanticized fashion. Ask anyone who has suffered major loss, death, illness-- rarely are clean, crisp clothes just out of the dryer, and visits to the grocery store and the three meals prepared with accuracy. Most will tell you that laundry, shopping, food preparation, cleanliness-- all the humdrums of life, are no longer done with the precision and accuracy and good old routine that they are presented as done here. The fantasy of a man on the verge written by a man far far far far from the verge can be sometimes a little annoying, and most likely insulting to those who have actually been to where Auster has not.
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