Rating: 
Summary: Sweet sentimentality burdened by simple and cliched writing
Review: This book is half appealing and half annoying. Auster does not do any original writing and the first half is particularly cliche driven. Ultimately his character ( the dog) and it's situation are involving but the writing never reaches even a decent level of originality or insight.
Rating: 
Summary: Depressing and unfulfilling reading experience.
Review: As an avid reader of all types of literature, and a true dog lover, I was looking forward to reading this book. While I liked the author's writing style of letting the dog think, feel and occasionally, speak in human terms, a black cloud seemed to pervade every page. I finished the book in the futile belief, that I, and the characters, would eventually be fulfilled. Not in this book. This book is definitely not for a reader looking for satisfying entertainment. It is more a commentary on the misery of a man and his canine counterpart.
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Summary: Mr Bones Leads me to "Moon Palace"
Review: I picked up this book due to the cover. A dog and book lover I found it excited my curosity, Never having read Mr Auster I was interested. Mr Bones did not fail to entertain, enlighten and affect me. I wanted more of course, would have enjoyed the history of Willie G and Mr Bones in at least 200 more pages, alas it was not meant to be. I related to both Willie and Mr Bones and was sad to have to part. After finishing Timbuktu I wanted more from this wonderful writer and someone recommended I pick up Moon Palace. Moon Palace is a wonderful book and Mr Auster is a very colorful and telling writer. I think Timbuktu was a wonderful book, would loved to have seen more development. Read "Moon Palace"
Rating: 
Summary: you get what you give
Review: At first Auster fans may wonder what's going on here...after the jazzy dazzle of his earlier works, he here presents a startlingly simple, prosaic tale. Has the master lost it? Not at all. In fact, the intuitive Auster reader will recognise exactly what he's up to. Possibly moreso than ever before he's playing with the roles of author and reader, examining how much of a novel comes from the creator and how much must come from us. This time the onus is really on us, like it is upon the main protagonist, Mr Bones, to make sense of everything, to find our way in the places where our master leaves us. 'Timbuktu' is a book which is as interesting as you are. I got loads from it, and in this straightforward tale I'm actually finding more than I have in some of Auster's earlier labyrinths, but quite easily someone else may get nothing from it. Great literature demands that we be active, not passive, in our participation. This is great literature.
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Summary: I bought the book on the strength of its cover..and won.
Review: I'm a dog lover not someone who knows the author's works. I bought the book pretty much on the strength of that wonderful canine half-face on the cover. The cover did not mislead. This is a short book, but it contains long, poignant, unwritten passages that emerged sweetly in my mind as memories of my own dogs. I've finished the book, yet Mr. Bones is still in my head. He will be there for a long time, I think. He told me everything, we became close. Fellow dog and animal lovers read this book with caution, you are entering an emotional whirlpool, and you will emerge thinking about Timbuktu for a long time.
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Summary: Well, I For One Found It Very Moving...
Review: I'm surprised by some of the nasty reviews here, especially from Kirkus. In truth, this book is too slim and too sad to appeal to the masses at all, and I'm absolutely certain Auster didn't see this as a potential best-seller. It's a flawed book -- too short, and not completely fleshed-out. It reads like it was written completely by feel, and in fact I heard Auster describe it this way, since he was intending for these two characters to be in a longer novel, but they just took over the story by themselves. But I wanted to say that I was very, very moved by the story...enough so that I couldn't sleep the night I read it. I think Paul Auster explores loneliness like almost no contemporary writer. I don't understand anybody writing this off as a sentimental doggy story. Mr. Bones is a dog only because dogs are the ultimate disenfranchised group; even religions have no dispensation for them. I thought Auster hit on something really important here, that the circumstances of the story perfectly cut to the heart of the absolute lack of security in loving someone. I'm frustrated by the book, too, mostly because I think Auster basically started the story near the end and didn't know where the heck else to go with it. Much of the middle feels like filler. But these are two characters who will stick with me a long time. Not Auster's best, but well worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad start, good finish
Review: The latter 2/3 of this book are a light literary romp, even touching. I recommend it. But it doesn't begin well. This novel begins with every Tom Waits-ish, Nighthawks at the Diner, Charles Bukowsi-like cliche you can think of. Auster even uses a phrase that Tom Waits used years before: "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy." The first quarter of this book, maybe the first third, reads as if it was written in a few days. We are told that dog backwards spells God (this might appear later in the book) and other cutesy things that we've all heard before (Santa rearranged spells Satan; hey I think I heard that one from the Church Lady [Dana Carvey] on Saturday Night Live about fifteen years ago). I don't know what this cute stuff is supposed to do for the reader: make him/her nostalgic for the good old days of pop culture? It does not further the plot or develop the characters and that's another problem with the first portion of this novel. Willy, the down-and-outer is not developed in any real way. The real stuff of human (or even dog) relations is not here. Hyperbolic cliche is substituted for the difficult stuff, the meat of good literature. BUT later the book improves. The hyperbolic stuff tones down and Mr. Bones, the dog, gets into situations that do further the characterization of the dog and of newly introduced characters, if not of Willy, and by the end the story has become somewhat tender and touching, and it reveals what potential it might have had had it been handled better from the beginning. It ends up being a worthwhile read but it also makes me a bit peeved because it could have been much better had the first portion been dealt with more seriously and with more care, and perhaps without old Tom Waits albums playing in the background as Auster wrote (just a guess). But don't get me wrong. Even Tom Waits is better than the first part of this novel. I like Tom Waits. He transcends the persona he uses to deliver his music, where a lesser singer would not, just as the first part of Timbuktu does not. Now that I've emphasized, overly perhaps, the negative, go out and buy this book.
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Summary: It comes as no surprise.
Review: This book requires two different reviews depending on whether or not the perspective reader has previously read any Auster. If you haven't, this book is a fine, interesting read (forget the Kirkus dog/god thing, you won't find "pure corn will cure porn" anywhere else). Auster is a modern master. The book will do you good as long as you can forgive Auster's careless application of his style of prose to every charcter's voice in the novel (well, most of them). If you have read more than three Auster books, you should know by now that Auster basically comes up with pretty much the same plot in every novel. The details and the subtlties vary, but this book is basically a mixture of The Music of Chance and parts of the New York Trilogy. If you read this expecting to find something completely new, you'll be disapointed. I think that's why so many people have reacted badly to Mr. Vertigo (which was an excellent book). Auster has a number of brilliant ideas in Timbuktu. There are only two major problems with the text. First, the point of view is not even slightly a dog's point of view. Don't be fooled. Auster isn't even close to being consistent with Dr. Bone's voice (Ingloosh...English setter?) Ok, next, as pointed out, the forty pages or so spent in suburbia are very disenchanting, but one can argue that a suburban landscape requires suburban plot and imagery...cest la guerre. BTW, if this book comes even close to being a best seller, I'll personally get a tatoo of Santa Claus on my arm. This is far from a sellout.
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Summary: The Emperor Without His Clothes
Review: A terribly disappointing novel from an author who seems to have gone downhill recently -- afraid, perhaps, to confront his proper demons and opting, instead, to take on a vaguely "wonderland" mythology that rings extremely hollow. I was very very disappointed. But I will still buy the next Auster book. And will continue to, if only because there is always the possibility with this writer that the magical can occur.
Rating:
Summary: prime master of the mind comes up slightly short
Review: I never thought I would say it but, I waited too long for another book by Paul Auster to be of this sort. It's not as if it is bad per se. The problem is, there are only hints of Auster's greatness: quirky characters, the notebook filled with writing, the inherent intelligence of characters able to perceive their demise even as it happens-- but these are fleeting at best. The notebook theme literally drops out of the story altogether. Why put it in?!? Don't tease us, man! Like Auster's previous novel, Mr. Vertigo, the hand of nostalgia is sometimes redolent to the point of sugar shock. Yet, I must empathize with his intentions if they are indeed to caputre nostalgia...it's almost as if he were taking his heart and putting it into a Kafka tome... But read his amazing biography, Hand To Mouth, or indeed anything else he has written first, and then decide on this one. And let it be said that even a 'minor' work such as this from Paul Auster is still better than most of the crap out there.
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