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Loading... Oracle Nightby Paul Auster
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Paul has a way of telling you just enough to keep you interested. I loved the character of the shop owner but my problem with the book is that it feels rushed at the end. Like everythign had to be concluded when the rest of the book flowed along like a great mystery. The main character is lovely, embracable, human, very much what i love about his writing. good for the beginning Auster readers but i would say not note his best. 1   Sarah771 | Apr 7, 2009 |  This a story about a writer who is recovering from a traumatic injury. As his passion to write returns (in a mystical notebook purchased from a very strange character) he finds that he has a different perspective on his life which centers on his marriage and career. He explores this with his writing and discovers secrets that he has previously ignored. I found this book hard to read with a second story being told in the footnotes. Never the less the book was engaging until the end when it seemed the author just decided it was time to finish it and did so hastily. There was opportunity to tie the two story lines together which I believe would have been much more interesting. (  ) fordskyliner | Jul 27, 2008 | wookiebender | Jun 2, 2008 | Auster’s novels are bizarre and yet they suck you in. This one is no exception. It catches a feeling about life that is profound: something about its insecurity and the way we stumble about, in a trial-and-error way. The novel provides all kinds of clues to muse about these themes and to connect the loose ends in the story (without really solving the puzzle). I found it very easy to slip into Sidney Orr's life: get to know his job, marriage, friends, his feelings, his suspicions and calculations. Apart from Sidney's inner life, the novel presents several strange (and dark) events, surprising yet convincing. (  )1 pingdjip | May 16, 2008 | Struggled with this book, really struggled. It's a story within a story with footnotes that make up another story. I read this book at night and my mind was just too tired to keep up with which story I was reading. Was it the main story? The one the main character's writing? I almost didn't care anymore. ( ) Banoo | Feb 29, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0571216978, Paperback)In Oracle Night, Paul Auster returns to one of his favorite themes: writing about writers and the act of writing. Recovering from a severe illness that has left him weak and prone to nosebleeds, struggling novelist Sidney Orr takes the suggestion of his mentor, the acclaimed novelist John Trause, and begins a story about a man who, upon considering a near-death experience as an omen (or excuse), walks out on his wife and begins a new life. Nick Bowen, Orr's protagonist, moves to Kansas City and finds work with a man engaged in creating a sort of catalogue of all known persons from a warehouse filled with phonebooks. Dressed in Goodwill clothing, Nick finds it "fitting to don the wardrobe of a man who has likewise ceased to exist--as if that double negation made the erasure of his past more thorough, more permanent." Grace, however, acts strangely soon after Sidney begins the "novel-within-a-novel" in a mysterious blue notebook.Auster uses footnotes to provide interesting backstory and develops Sidney's insecurities regarding love and fidelity, but when Sidney hits a patchy spot and writes Bowen into a corner, he (and Auster) shrugs and drops the story. The mystery that seemingly unrelated coincidences may have a causal connection is left unresolved, and Trause's delinquent son shows up to facilitate a hollow, climactic ending. Auster is a gifted writer, to be sure, but once trapped by the inner story, Oracle Night loses steam. --Michael Ferch (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:22 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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