Book of Illusions, The

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, beautiful, amazing
Review: This is the third book of Auster's that I've read -- Leviathan and The New York Trilogy being the first two, equally wonderful works. Auster is at once a writer who makes you want to rush to the end of his books because you have to keep going and know everything, and at the same time he makes you want to savor and cherish every word. His worlds are always dark and depressing yet infused with light and hope -- in a word, they're real. This book is wonderful from start to finish, heartbreaking and compelling. Just when you think all is well, that everything will turn out in the end, he hits you with something else, but it all fits and it all makes sense. Each time I read him I want more. Luckily for us, he's prolific. Read this book -- it will stay with you as all important books should do.

Rating:
Summary: A seriously great book
Review: I truly think this is one of the best modern works of literature out right now. Auster's voice and writing style are beautiful. Even when the action might be slow, you will still find yourself engrossed in the story simply because of his writing. As you follow the narrator, you begin to identify with him, understand him, and feel compelled to go along on the journey with him. Even as he describes his darkest times, you don't feel pity for him because he describes it matter-of-factly. Living alone and writing are his ways of dealing with his situation (without going back to drinking all the time) - simple as that.

Even better than the narrator's voice and your connection to him is the character of Hector Mann. He is perhaps one of the greatest creations in literature. From his silent films to his life afterwards, Auster creates a character that is extremely compelling and interesting - and again there isn't really any feeling of pity for Hector despite the dark circumstances of his life.

The reader will see that both men use their work to forget about the problems and horrors of their past. Hector wants to make sure there is nothing to carry his memory on when he is gone, but the narrator will work to create that memory for Hector, the person who saved him. And with that action he creates his own memory that will go on. They each saved the other so that both memories would last.

Definitely read this book. The writing is beautiful, the characters are amazing creations, and the story will leave you thinking about how you want to leave your mark on the world.


Rating:
Summary: One of the best books I've read in a while
Review: I've read the book in three evening sittings. It is a wonderful book, sometimes it feels a bit weird, just like life is, but since I finished it two days ago, I catch myself thinking about it every now and then... A really good piece of writing, quite gripping, every phrase has it's own tension.

Rating:
Summary: The Book of Improbable Coincidences
Review: Almost two hundred years ago, Coleridge wrote about the "willing suspension of disbelief." Although he was referring to what he called "poetic faith," his succinct turn of phrase has often been applied to literature and cinema. As readers, we usually bequeath our disbelief to an author for the duration of our involvement, but occasionally, we encounter a work that so strains our credulity, we simply can't sustain the effort and the entire fiction crashes down around us.

A collapsing house of cards is how I would describe THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS. This is a book filled with enough contrived coincidences, improbable circumstances, and unlikely characters to spin Coleridge's bones in his grave. Whatever commentary Paul Auster sought to offer on the ephemeral nature of cinema, the necessary illusions of acting, the transience (and illusions) in human relationships, and the deeper questions of artistic ownership, it is mostly lost in a fog of unlikely events and melodramatic characters. In the end, the book comes across as the novelistic equivalent of the high school conundrum: "If a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?" Does anyone care?

THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS traces the parallel lives of two men whose fates intersect as the result of tragic accidents. David Zimmer, a professor of comparative literature, loses his wife and two young sons to an airplane accident. In the midst of (what else?) a severe alcoholic funk, he happens to find a moment's relief in a silent comedy starring Hector Mann, a promising young actor who suddenly and mysteriously disappeared from public view sixty years ago. Prints of Hector's lost movies have suddenly begun appearing at museums around the world, so David elects to devote himself to seeing each movie and writing a critical study of Mann's work.

His book published, Zimmer receives a mysterious phone call one day saying that the long-missing Hector Mann wants to meet him. From this starting point, we learn what happened to Hector during those missing years and how his life and life's work are resolved. Throughout, we are treated to such coincidences as the two men's dead sons named Tad and Todd, Zimmer pursuing the presumed-dead Hector while simultaneously translating from French an autobiography entitled Memoirs of a Dead Man, a silent film star who wants to silence his own voice (get it?), and a cap found in a men's room by Hector belonging to one Herman (Herr Mann, get it?) Loesser (loser or lesser, get it?). We also wallow through a cast of female characters with names like Dolores, Alma, Faye, Nora, Sylvia, and Frieda, an Irish shop owner named Red (what else?), Mexican deaf mute midget twins (argh!) embarrassingly named Juan and Conchita (deaf mutes working as servants for a silent movie star, get it?), and a ranch named after a congealed glob of spit.

Despite everything, I still gave this book three stars. Like a great sports team, Auster at less than his best is still better than most. THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS is an entertaining story, and Auster's style provides compelling reading in a mystery novel atmosphere. His descriptions of Hector Mann's silent film performances are marvelous - we can visualize the comic action from the written page. His later description of Hector's movie, The Inner Life of Martin Starr, is even better, although the plot trick was a bit too obvious and a bit too Twilight Zone for me.

If you've read Paul Auster before, by all means read THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS. If you haven't yet read Auster's work, start with THE NEW YORK TRILOGY, THE MUSIC OF CHANCE, or MOON PALACE before reading this one. You will find THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS enjoyable even if it is not one of the author's best. I particularly recommend it as airplane reading. You'll understand why while you're reading at 35,000 feet - it's better than Xanax.

Rating:
Summary: You'll have to fight to finish it.
Review: This had to be one of the most plodding overwritten books I've ever been unfortunate enough to read. Huge and I mean HUGE passages go off on tangents and it basically leaves you wanting to tear your eyes out. Then, after suffering through all the blah, blah, blah and toughing out massive meaningless passages the book ends completely abruptly as if the author had no idea how to end his story. In fact, the ending was nothing short of a major disappointment with absolutely no reward whatsoever. Aside from a tiny bit of brilliant imagery here and there this book is pure tedium and a must miss.

Rating:
Summary: Paul Auster is a Danielle Steele for the Literary Crowd
Review: I read Paul Auster's "The Book of Illusions" in the same manner I read two of his other novels, "The Music of Chance" and "Mr. Vertigo": over the span of two days, in two to three hour sittings. This is always the way with Auster's novels: they are page-turners, impossible to put down. The stories are always strange and surprising enough to capture the attention quickly and not let go, until one is finished and famished. The writing is always crisp and efficient, although it is hardly ever beautiful writing, like certain crisp writing can be: Milan Kundera's writing, for example. And yet "The Book Of Illusions", like Auster's other novels offers passages that surprise-sudden jewel sentences that explode from the careening paragraphs and force you to stop and notice. One of these sentences occurs about halfway through the book, on page 165: "Life was a fever dream, he discovered, and reality was groundless world of figments and hallucinations, a place where everything you imagined came true." This sentence could be quoted on the back of the cover of this novel-and it could probably quoted on the back of every novel Auster has ever written.

I always get the feeling, while reading Auster, that he has written the novel I am reading with an almost ridiculous sense of rushing excitement-but the excitement always ends and Auster moves on, as I move on, briefly entertained, but almost never influenced, or changed. In this sense, Paul Auster is like a Danielle Steele for literary readers: you jump into his novels and lose yourself for a few days, but when you're finished you have no problem leaving the novel behind-in a seaside motel, for example-for others to discover. (You probably wouldn't treat a Kundera novel the same: after reading "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", you want to keep the book around, to cherish it like a talisman, or at least keep it in view on the bookshelf, in hopes that someday you will read it again, or that some friend will find it and want to read it-as long as he or she promises to give it back.) That said, "The Book of Illusions" captivated me while it lasted. The first day, a Saturday, I read fifty pages; the second day, Sunday, I read one 150 pages; and the third day, Monday, I read the final 120 pages, during the course of a slow evening. I only wish I had read it at the beach, during the course of a slow weekend.

Rating:
Summary: A Rather Dry Run
Review: There are at least three major stories in this novel. That of David Zimmer, a professor who lost his wife and two sons in a plane crash, that of Hector Mann, a silent film comedian who entered the genre as it was rapidly folding to a close, and that of Alma Grund, daughter of Hector Mann's cameraman, an expert on Mann, and Zimmer's love interest.

Watching a Mann comedy draws Zimmer out of his prolonged, unrelieved grief for his dead family ~ we know he is grieving, we are told this again and again. Because of this, Zimmer takes it upon himself to explore the life and films of obscure actor Mann. As he does Zimmer realises Mann's life mirrors his own to a goodly extent, essentially a series of reactions to circumstances, some of them quite awful.

Auster's descriptions of Mann's films are entertaining; he devised some intriguing plots and displayed an obviously well-researched grasp of the finer details of this medium. Where the book falls flat is when he strives to instill a touch of humanity into his characters. His unrelieved expository writing style is strangely distancing; I never quite got into the heads or hearts of anyone in this book. For example, the love story between Zimmer and Grund presumably is supposed to represent some great, star-struck, karmic-soulmate type of romance, but instead comes off as overblown and tediously dramatic.

Auster's trademark manner of writing might take some getting used to. He writes in little explosions, piling up the narrative then veering onto a different track that twists into another story. It's not a swift ride either. Some of these tracks meander for pages and pages before winding to a finish. It's rather offputting, as if Auster holds his subject matter at arm's length while at the same time thoroughly examining it beneath a microscope.

Since Auster delights in the incongruous one must work at suspending disbelief. (Throughout the book I found myself thinking, 'my, that's clever' or, 'what a neat turn of phrase'). Emotions typically run at a fever pitch and there are intervals of implausible action. We are placed into a world where blows of fate and bad luck and unfortunate timing rule the day, forcing the characters into directions they wouldn't have otherwise taken. And that's where Auster's distancing writing style proves the most effective. Ultimately the reader isn't wrung of their own emotions and not much is demanded of them. Which, depending on your viewpoint, can be a very fine thing or the absolute worst way to spend time with a novel.