Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Short, simple, but profoundly moving, 1 Sep 2008
Whether through its shortness of length or through the familiarity with typical Paul Auster subject matter, there seems to be a tendency in other reviews here so far to underestimate the true worth of the author's latest novel. Man in the Dark may indeed appear short and simple on the surface, but the importance of its subject matter and the emotional depth it covers is nonetheless remarkable.
Through August Brill, the man in the dark, Auster tries to make sense of the world through the medium of the writer spinning ideas in his head. Yes, that's nothing new with Auster and there's certainly a sense of post-modern reflection on the nature of writing and the duty of the writer, but as with Brooklyn Follies and his collection of True Tales Of American Life, Auster is interested in ordinary people and the impact of the exceptional or significant moments on their lives.
Those significant events affecting American people today are alluded to in the book's references to Iraq and the Twin Towers. It's not Auster's intention to confront such grand events, however significant they might seem, but to reduce them to the smaller scale in considering how people learn to deal with such experiences. That does not make Man In The Dark a lesser work. Through memories, shared experiences of joy and suffering, through the fictions they create and the movies they watch, his characters struggle to make sense of an absurd world ever more inclined to bring new unspeakable horrors. Auster masterfully brings these all together into a profoundly moving piece that is richer in meaning and worth than its apparent brevity suggests.
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The weird world of Paul Auster rolls back into town, 27 Aug 2008
The first half of the book has an alternative universe thing going on which kept making me think of a high school kid trying to rewrite Terminator it was just so cringey; I think intentionally bad and overdramatic dialogue, plus an old man, August Brill, lying in bed inventing it all.
Yet in the second half, the story became for me much more moving, about family, forgiveness, and the redemptive power of stories. Brill and his grief-stricken granddaughter Katya watch old movies together and re-tell the plots later; the story of Brill's own complicated marriage emerges during a long dark night chat with Katya.
There are chunks of the story missing as far as I'm concerned - I wanted to know more about Miriam, Brill's daughter! - and it won't go on my list of his best books ever, but by the last few pages, I was weeping (as usual with his books) and I found it in the end incredibly moving. Don't miss it if you are a fan, but be prepared for that weird meta-science fiction slant to start with...
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A story about darkness., 19 Dec 2008
I began to read Paul Auster in the eighties. I was captivated by the bleak, mysterious, and inimical atmosphere of his novels. But at the same time his sense of humor, his love for the absurd, and the relentless search for The Father formed a counterpart for the dark side of his novels.
All these things are together again in his latest novel "Man In The Dark". I love this novel because it's the real Paul Auster. He writes without commercial afterthought and he refuses to go easy on us (like in his novel The Brooklyn Follies).
Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughter's house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would prefer to forget - his wife's recent death and the horrific murder of his granddaughters' boyfriend, Titus.
August imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the Twin Towers did not fall, and the 2000 election results led to the secession, as state after state pulled away from the union, and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, August's story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told.
Passionate and shocking, Man in the Dark is a novel of our moment, a book that forces us to confront the darkness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence.
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