Another solid 30p buy from the Barbican Library’s overstock titles. On
its cover it has a line from its Herald’s
review saying “If you have never read Auster before … this is the place to
start”. True that. The issue, however, is that if you have read plenty of
Auster before, this is quite far from being a particularly original work.
Sure, it’s beautifully written like all of Auster’s novels, and it’s also
gripping and nerve-wrecking as only his stories can be, but everything in it
has already been seen: the Sisyphean task of reorganizing phone books reminds
the reader of the wall of The Music of
Chance, the inability of a writer to proceed with his work is, well, just
like pretty much every other novel Auster has ever written, the importance of
colours (like team Blue) echoes The New
York Trilogy, and both the in-house aggression and Nick’s story within the
story and his slow but inevitable death look very much like scenes and
anecdotes taken from Smoke.
This remains a really good read, and, I agree, it would be a great introduction to Auster’s world, but it’s not exactly ground-breaking. To give credit where credit is due, however, the little side-stories that the author develops in his page-long footnotes are truly great.
