Rating: 
Summary: The language triumphs over all its other deficits.
Review: Why do I keep reading Paul Auster's books? Because despite the big disappointments in characters and how things turn out, his language just knocks me out. Some of it is just so delicious that I don't know if I could stand it if he actually maintained that level of virtuosity throughout a whole book. Although I couldn't stand how Timbuktu turned out, especially after Willy died, I did read it in one fell swoop. I do wish I hadn't bought it, though, but had checked it out from the library.
Rating: 
Summary: A slender, somewhat unsatisfying read
Review: Mr Auster is truly one of the giants of contemporary american fiction, but I wonder if he hasn't missed the boat with this, his most recent foray into the novel. The premise seemed interesting enough: a homeless schizophrenic and his faithful companion, a veritable Sancho Panza and Don Quixote in rags, venture forth across the urban landscape in search of a long-lost friend to safe-keep a dying man's entrire literary output (what was in those notebooks? we never really find out as the disappear midway through the novel). Instead of exploring the mind of Willy G. Christmas (truly a character!) and the contents of his notebooks, we get a suburban slice-of-life tale complete with the textbook distant husband and unfulfilled wife and her precocious children. Only Mr. Bones unique narration, surpirizingly cerebral for a dog, saves this novel from being a complete wash. He might be coasting here, but Auster coasting is still better than most on a good day.
Rating: 
Summary: A book that barks but doesn't bite
Review: This is, by far, the worst book ever written by Paul Aster and (I hope) the worst he'll ever write. The question here is: What happened to the man who wrote "The Invention of Solitude" and "Leviathan" and the script of "Smoke"? Answer: I'm afraid he was found roaming the streets by Lulu's Bridge (another big ugh!) and put to sleep. "Timbuktu" is --literally-- a dog of a book. And, yes, without testicles!
Rating: 
Summary: Timbuctoo is a mini-masterpiece
Review: Unlike any of Paul Auster's eight previous novels, Timbuctoo has the brevity of a mini-masterpiece like Camus' The Stranger. Whereas Auster's most recent novel, Mr.Vertigo, was a wild, whirling tour de force which presented a fairly predictable, Austeresque grab-bag of tricks,Timbuctoo takes a simpler road story, hypers it down, and moves it toward ghostlier, chilled-out regions of the heart. With his two main characters' names resembling outcast protagonists from Faulkner's Light in August and Berryman's The Dream Songs, Auster's picaresque dream-fable is unique and riveting. From Brooklyn to Baltimore, the poet manqué Willy G. Christmas' quixotic garrulousness animates the first two-thirds of the book, reflecting Auster's career-long obsession with characters spouting brilliant, cracked monologues. In the last third of Timbuctoo, however, after Christmas dies in the gutter like Poe, his sidekick dog, the novel's main character, Mr. Bones, escapes the city to be adopted and "keep up with the Joneses." Auster's depiction of prosperous, turn-of-the-millennium suburbia is more poignant than bitter. Accordingly, Mr. Bones's final escape, a sick, spayed pooch--from the kennel where he's been boarded while his new masters are on vacation at Disney World--is heartbreaking, quite thrilling. Timbuctoo probes the existential loneliness of a canine outsider whose sensibility is human, who understands our "Ingloosh" but can't speak it except in his dreams. To the very last page this mutt-man Sancho Panza gets by on more than his wits; he has dignity, soul. Capable of love to a fault, he's as loyal as Kent to Lear, and he believes in Heaven as one of the most offbeat outposts on earth. Of all Paul Auster's novels, I rank Timbuctoo right under Moon Palace and City of Glass, on a par with The Music of Chance and Leviathan. Whether your preference is Animal Farm or Lassie, Come Home, you must read Timbuctoo!
Rating:
Summary: Wait for the Video
Review: This work is not a book, but rather a weakly written screenplay by an author that has abandoned the art of literature in favor of Hollywood-style movie imagery. Following the downward slide into silliness presaged in Mr. Vertigo, Auster delivers an unfunny and uninspired narrative about a thinking and talking dog, and the characters (no, caricatures) that inhabit his world. The author revisits some familiar ground (for example, detailed descriptions of people who are "down on their luck"), but with significantly less style and originality than his earlier works such as Moon Palace or the brilliant New York Trilogy. This quota-filler would be considered simply bad if delivered by any other author; coming from a waning talent like Auster, its also sad.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is funny, not just "slender."
Review: While perhaps this is not one of Auster's most ambitious outings, it's still a great read. It avoids the self-seriousness of some of his more literary work. The choice of Mr. Bones as the narrator avoids being a gimmick due to the wonderful, wandering shape of the narrative and the dead-on insights. This book isn't perfect, but it's a true pleasure to read. You'll laugh out loud. You'll think. And this is yet another example of why you people at Amazon.com should stop using Kirkus, which is notorious for being snide and cutting; its reviews are written by failed writers for $30 a pop. Are you trying to sell books and cultivate readers or what?
Rating: 
Summary: Reviews
Review: In a world in which many people get treated like dogs, Paul Auster has elected to tell us the story of a dog's life, and by the end of this brief, extraordinary book he has made us think, feel and even dream along with his canine Mr. Bones. By stepping outside the frame of our own species, Auster allows us to see ourselves afresh, through the eyes of the loving, half-comprehending, half-mystified aliens who live within our homes." -Salman Rushdie "From Smoke to The Invention of Solitude to Timbuktu, Paul Auster has been an unswerving voice no matter what form he chooses, no matter what tale he imagines and tells. A generous heart always. A style on the high-wire always." -Michael Ondaatje
Rating:
Summary: an upbeat book that wags it's tail in yer face
Review: Who says Austers books are full of gloom and despair? One dogs point of view here, full of mirth and acute observation. Dogs understand human speech. They can read. (Why else would there exist signs"No Dogs Allowed Except Seeing Ey e Dogs" Great toaster invention idea
Rating:
Summary: Doggie Dilemmas, Writ Large
Review: Mr. Auster has never been one of my favorite writers. Mr. Vertigo and The Music of Chance are too cutesy--too "written," for my taste. I've always preferred my writers a little crazier, a bit less cerebral, a bit more visceral. My father gave me this book, and I read it because some students of mine in a fiction class were trying to write stories from a dog's point of view. (It was very helpful for the class.) I was surprised that I liked it as much as I did, but I had the same problem with it that I had with the rest of his books. He's not satisfied with just getting inside the dog's head (which he does, with occasionally delightful results--"...it was more than just love or devotion that caused Mr. Bones to dread what was coming. It was pure ontological terror."), but then he has to comment on it in the cutesy voice of his close-3rd person narrator: "How was [Mr. Bones] to know that those missing parts had been responsible for turning him into a father many times over?" It's as if he's condescending to his pooch protagonist. Poor Mr. Bones. I felt for him at the end of the book, when Mr. Auster forces him into a denouement that he doesn't deserve. Still, the book has some great moments, and I actually liked the crazy Mr. Christmas, whose schizophrenic monologues are like something out of Beckett.
Rating:
Summary: Timbuktu Manuscripts
Review: There are 700000 manuscripts that need to be preserved in the region of Timbuktu. You can see more information at http://www.timbuktufoundation.org
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