I read a lot of Paul Auster in the 1980's and it was enjoyable to reconnect with him via this one. Auster has a wonderfully engaging style, his books are well plotted and always intriguing. Oracle Night didn't disappoint. ( )

Sydney, a Brooklyn writer recovering from a near-fatal illness wanders into a stationery store owned by Mr. Chan, purchases a blue notebook, and for the first time in a long while begins writing, the story magically pouring from his pen. He writes of an editor, Nick Bowen, who is given a strange manuscript by a long dead writer to edit. But on his way to the office one day, Nick is nearly killed by a heavy falling object, and this experience impels him to just drop everything in his life and run away to the first place he can buy a plane ticket for, Kansas City as it happens. In Kansas City, Nick becomes involved with a man who collects worldwide telephone books and stores them in a "museum" hidden away underground under the railroad tracks, where Nick becomes trapped with no way out when the telephone book collector suddenly dies of heart disease.....So we have a story within a story, within a story: The manuscript of a novel called Oracle Night by a deceased writer, being edited by Nick, who has just abandoned his life to run away to Kansas City, as written/imagined by Sydney, a writer in Brooklyn who hasn't written in a while, as written/imagined by Paul Auster (a writer living in Brooklyn I believe). There's layer after layer here, and it was sometimes a challenge keeping track of whose story we were in, especially if I had set the book aside for a few days. But it was all thoroughly enjoyable. I'm a fan of most of the Paul Auster books I've read. I like the way he frequently plays games with the reader of his books, and I constantly marvel at his imaginative powers.

4 stars ( )

Once again I was drawn into this book by the strong narrative voice.
Sidney Orr is recovering from a near fatal illness. He is a writer, but since his illness has been unable to write. One day he sees a blue notebook in a stationary shop and feels compelled to buy it and start writing. The words flow and the reader is now following two story lines. Meanwhile, his wife Grace seems a bit distanced and eventually reveals she is pregnant. Their friend John asks him to visit his son, who is in drug rehab. When the plot for his novel becomes stuck, John who is an accomplished writer offers to send him a possible movie manuscript to help pay his hospital bill, Sidney starts considering his wife's strange behaviour and comes to a sudden realisation. The story comes to a violent tragic end.
Auster uses footnotes to fill in background details to the story. These continue over several pages and then you have to go back and pick up the storyline. An interesting device which might upset some readers.
I was initially totally absorbed with this story within a story format but then I started to predict the plot, perhaps I was meant to. I guess life can throw you sudden curve balls which change the trajectory of one's life. Overall a good book that kept me turning pages. ( )

Auster is 2 for 2. Both books I've read by him have been pretty incredible. The ending of this one was gut wrenching (sic). ( )

A complicated novel about an author who's writing a book about an author who's reading a book about another author (etc...) and in the process finds himself digging unexpected stuff about his own life out of his subconscious. But there's also a Magic Notebook and a Mysterious Chinaman (do they really still have those?) and it all somehow boils down to a fistfight between two men about a woman.

Very stylish, but I'm not sure what it did for me, if anything. ( )