ISBN-13: 978-0805077148
About a year ago, I read City of Glass, the first book of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, and I really liked it. This is not that book.
City of Glass was a surrealistic, meta-fictional novel I read as part of series of weird detective fiction/sci-fi books that occupied most of my reading time in the early part of 2008. Really, it was kind of the end of it, because I think I got sucked into Mists of Avalon after that. In any case, it was a great read and I know I need to read the last two books in the series, but instead of making you guys start in the middle, I thought I would pick another book by the same author to somewhat allay my guilt. It's not working yet, though.
The Brooklyn Follies seems like a totally different genre and style, like The Crying of Lot 49 meets In the Shadow of No Towers. You can get a comprehensive list of the reviews at Paul Auster's site here, and find it for next to nothing on Amazon here. If you visit Auster's site, there's a creepy button on every page with the words "Enter my forum." I won't judge if you do.
The book is about 300+ pages, so why don't we try for 100 or so by the next meeting? And if it sucks, there's always Wuthering Heights.
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So far, there's a guy with broken dreams named Tom from New York. Eerily familiar, if you ask me!
ReplyDeleteI'm done with our first assignment. Dig the story, but don't really dig the writing style. Auster tries too hard while trying to make it seem like he's not trying at all, resulting in an unnecessarily prolix style for what I think he wants to achieve. I'll explain more during the meeting if we don't limit the discussion to plot, themes, characters, etc.
ReplyDeleteRegarding characters, Tom's speech in the book has taken on the voice of Hayden Christensen as whiny Anakin during the last 50 or so pages. He's fronting big time and doesn't realize it, which has really started to annoy me.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/08/books/review/08kirn.html
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