Reviews

Publishers Weekly
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In his latest, Auster is in classic form, perhaps too perfectly satisfying the contention of his wearied protagonist: "there is far more poetry in the world than justice." Adam Walker, a poetry student at Columbia in the spring of 1967, is Auster's latest everyman, revealed in four parts through the diary entries of a onetime admirer, the confessions of his once-close friend, the denials of his sister and Walker's own self-made frame. With crisp, taut prose, Auster pushes the tension and his characters' peculiar self-awareness to their limits, giving Walker a fractured, knowing quality that doesn't always hold. The best moments from Walker's disparate, disturbing coming-of-age come in lush passages detailing Walker's conflicted, incestuous love life (paramount to his "education as a human being," but a violation of his self-made promise to live "as an ethical human being"). As the plot moves toward a Heart of Darkness-style journey into madness, the limits of Auster's formalism become more apparent, but this study of a young poet doomed to life as a manifestation of poetry carries startling weight. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved


Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Auster himself narrates his 15th novel-following Man in the Dark (2008), also available from Macmillan Audio and BBC Audiobooks America-which deals with incestuous love, the magnetic power of intelligent evil, injustice, and self-discovery. His use of intertextuality and his crisp, simple prose will keep listeners fully engaged from beginning to end. However, his temperate and fluid narration makes it at times difficult to distinguish among the many characters, especially during dialog. For all appreciators of contemporary literature. ["If you've never read Auster, this is a great place to start," read the review of the Holt hc, LJ 10/1/09; fans, too, "will not be disappointed."-Ed.]--Isela Pena-Rager, San Dimas, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.


Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Many readers familiar with the work of Paul Auster consider him to be one of the most profound and provocative of contemporary novelists, a literary magician, a master of making fiction about the artor the sleight-of-hand illusionof making fiction. Auster attracted a loyal following in the mid-1980s for what was subsequently known as his New York Trilogyan elliptical trio of genre subversions and meditations on identitybut his reviews have been mixed in the two decades since the subsequent Moon Palace and The Music of Chance. Now comes Invisible, a novel of such virtuosity and depth that it should not only unite the faithful in a hallelujah chorus, it deserves to draw legions of converts as well. More than a return to form, this might be Auster's best novel yet, combining his postmodern inquiries into the nature of fiction and the essence of identitythe interplay between life and artwith a thematic timelessness in its narrative of virtue and evil, guilt and redemption. If this isn't quite Auster's Crime and Punishment, it could be his Notes from the Underground. It's also a novel he couldn't have written a couple of decades ago, during what was previously considered his peak. Though it concerns a 20-year-old, literary-minded student at Columbia University in 1967when the literary-minded Auster was the same age at the same universityits narrative reflects the autumnal perspective of four decades later, with a protagonist whose life has taken different turns than Auster's. In fact, there are three distinct narrative voices, as sections employ the first-person "I," the second-person "you" and the third person "he" in relating the story of how the student's encounter with a visiting professor from Paris and his silent, seductive girlfriend changes the lives of all three and others as well. The labyrinth of plot and narrative also includes the student's beautiful sister, a mother and daughter in France through whom he seeks atonement and a fellow Columbia alum who has become, like Auster, a successful writer. There are sins, obsessions, a corpse and a thin line between fantasy and memory. To reveal more would rob the reader of the discoveries inherent within this novel's multilayered richness. Auster writes of "the obsessive story that has wormed its way into your soul and become an integral part of your being." This is that story. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.


Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Auster's 15th novel at first may sound like another story about the familiar themes the writer's fans have come to expect: Brooklyn and New York, bohemian protagonists and their enigmatic sidekicks, meaningful quests for truth, and convoluted plots realistic enough to keep you from second-guessing the actions of the characters. Indeed, the story incorporates all such elements: divided into four distinct parts, told by three different narrators, and spanning 40 years, it is centered on the relationship among an aspiring Columbia University student-poet, a mysterious professor, and the professor's girlfriend that starts out as friendship but ends in manipulation and murder. Whether such themes still excite longtime Auster fans is less important than his still remarkably strong storytelling-perhaps even more so than in recent works of fiction-that his characters are still unpredictable and full of passion for life, and that once we start reading those masterfully bare sentences, we don't want to stop. VERDICT If you've never read Auster, this is a great place to start and work your way backward to such classics as the City of Glass and Leviathan. If you've been a fan for a long time, you will not be disappointed.-Mirela Roncevic, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.


Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.

*Starred Review* Trapped and cornered like a rat in a maze. So it is for Auster's brooding loners. In this edgy bildungsroman, this tightly focused tale of treachery, Adam Walker, an introspective young man, a poet no less, and a student attending Columbia University in 1967, meets his nemesis at a party. Rudolph Born, a professor in the School of International Affairs, is commanding, volatile, and dangerous. Adam knows he shouldn't trust him, yet he cannot resist Born's astonishing offer to bankroll a literary magazine and put Adam in charge, nor can he spurn the advances of Born's sexy lover. Witness to Born's capacity for violence, Adam first seeks justice, and then settles for revenge, but he is in over his head and harboring his own toxic secret. In this erotic, archly philosophical thriller, Auster, seductive and masterly, pilots readers from New York to Paris to California to a fortresslike island in the Caribbean, as he slyly contrasts the subtle pleasures of the mind with the wildness of the body, and delves into the repercussions of guilt, the unfathomable power of desire, and the insidious consequences of narcissism and debauchery. With fascinating characters, a spiraling structure, and a Heart of Darkness-like conclusion, this is a sublimely suspenseful, insightful, and disquieting novel.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2009 Booklist