When I think of Paul Auster, I think of strange, mysterious stories that bob and weave like a boxer. So it's easy to see why I would find Timbuktu to be a strange story for him to have written. Though it is a simple and straightforward story, it touches emotional depths that are impressively powerful and leaves an incredible impact on the reader when it's all said and done.

The story revolves around a dog named Mr. Bones--a dog that, though never anthropomorphized, is nevertheless capable of extraordinarily complex and humanlike thought. His owner, Willy Christmas, is a homeless man on a quest to find his old teacher in Baltimore before dying. When Willy collapses in the city, Mr. Bones takes off to escape being sent to the pound, and over the course of the coming days, meets a number of new owners that give him insight into what his life really means.

Auster's style is incredibly compelling throughout the book, as he mostly deals with characters that are less than highly educated but still have powerful, resonating emotions and ideas. It's easy to think that characters as simple as, say, Willy could never possibly feel the kinds of things that Auster describes, but he couches them in such straightforward stories and memories that it all feels cogent and coherent. He never plays dumb with the reader or betrays his characters, and it makes the read that much more enjoyable.

Dog lovers will obviously find lots to love about this book, but Paul Auster's gift is that he takes a story like this and makes it far deeper and more affecting that it appears on the surface. By the time you turn the final page, you are so invested in Mr. Bones that you almost miss him, even as he is left in a curiously ambiguous space. For such a brief, basic tale, Timbuktu packs a wallop, and is surely not one to be missed.

Translated into Persian, rank 70/1001

Heartwrenching and beautiful... I love the perspective. Quick read and well worth it. ( )

The Voice and the Cliches: As a fan of Auster's works (I liked NY Trilogy, In the Country of Last Things, Moon Palace, Invention of Solitude, Hand to Mouth), I went into this book fearing the worst. A couple of friends told me it wasn't very good, and they were unfortunately correct.The two most detrimental factors that contributed to the failure of this book are as follows:1) The fairy-tale-esque narrator voice. Mostly it's condescending, and very quickly it becomes annoying. I don't know what Auster was thinking, choosing this particular narrative style. It just doesn't work.2) Cliches. There's so much lazy writing in this novel -- just start counting the number of cliches Auster uses. It's criminal.

New Yorker Auster has always written about sharp reversals of fortune, and the subject of this novel - a mongrel dog named Mr Bones, whose master is nearing death - offers wonderful scope to explore the theme. Auster's triumph is that we never doubt for a moment that the dog can reason like an intelligent child and understand human speech. This broadly comic tale offers glimpses of a profound and humane wisdom glinting beneath its assured surface.