Man in the Dark - Books (Paul Auster, Paperback)

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Customer Reviews of Man in the Dark

avid reader
Oxford UK
5th January 2009

What a disappointment!
I am generally a fan of Paul Auster, but this effort is a poorly-constructed jumble of ideas. The first part reads like a teenage attempt at a philosophical novel - rather like "Sophie's World" but nowhere near as well thought-through and, by now, not very original. This thread is abruptly terminated and we are led instead into a sentimental meander through coming-to-terms-with-loss. There is a common thread of the horror of war, but it's not enough to create any coherence. The book itself is also very short, so for the money, both the quality and quantity are lacking. It's not very often that I feel like writing to a publisher in disgust, but this could be that moment. This publication very much trades on the author's reputation rather than his current achievement.

jerard1

24th December 2008

Brilliant novel
Paul Auster is a master storyteller and this is one of his best. August Brill lies in bed trying in vain to get sleep - so he spins a weird story of an alternative universe...But his storytelling is a way of keeping his mind off heartbreaking events in a world we can all recognise. I can't recommend this highly enough.

Jan Dierckx
Belgium, Turnhout
19th December 2008

A story about darkness.
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.

J. Minogue
UK
29th November 2008

'The weird world rolls on' ------some spoilers------
`I am alone in the dark, turning the world around in my head as I struggle though another bout of insomnia, another white night in the great American wilderness.'

Man in the Dark opens with August Brill, a Pulitzer prize winning critic, lying in the pitch black as he recovers from a car accident in his daughter's house. Grandfather, daughter Miriam and granddaughter Katya share the house since the `the roof fell in on Katya' and she dropped out of film school.

Brill tells himself stories as he lies awake - he wants to divert his mind from his worries; the death of his wife, of his granddaughter's boyfriend Titus, of his daughter's failed marriage. He and his granddaughter Katya have been spending their time watching films together, conscious displacement activity to avoid thinking about their lives.

In the alternate world he conjures up an alter ego - Owen Brick wakes up in a deep hole dressed in uniform. It's a world where the twin towers were never bombed. Instead of a war in Iraq the disputed US election of 2000 has led to a civil war in America. Throughout the night Brill alternates between the worlds until he abandons Brick to his American wilderness `with no chance to say a last word or think a last thought'. Brick then starts to confront the list of subjects he told us he was avoiding; his wife Sonia, the shocking story of Titus' death and his worries about his daughter. Then he and Katya have a long insomniac conversation on the same topics.

For me, the characters became more and more sympathetic as we gradually learn more of their back stories and see their connection to each other. Auster's themes of stories within stories, war and writing knit together well in this short novel.

The book covers just one wakeful night and ends with a plan for going out to breakfast - a hopeful end to a thoughtful book which challenges us to confront our thoughts about our weird world.

Alfred King

28th October 2008

Lazy
Auster never writes badly, but this is a lazy lazy book. The first half is an ambling, pointless collection of stories that go nowhere. It's like he's shoehorned bits of writing in from elsewhere and no editor has said "hang on, what's the point of this?" The conceit of the novel that here is a man creating a dream/story to keep him from thinking of terrible memories runs out of steam very quickly and Auster seems to just end it abruptly when it's clear it's a blind alley. The idea that he somehow creates an alternative reality, a world without the 9/11 attacks is nonsense. Towards the end of the book that are flashes of quite moving and affective prose, but that's not much to say for a very disappointing book.