I've never read a Paul Auster novel that I didn't like, but among the five or six titles I have read there are some that rank higher than others. Leviathan is one of those, because it seems to define what Auster is all about. It has the unreliable narrator, confronting two stories of different characters that can't be brought into agreement; the magnificent miniature portraits of the main characters, each single one of them a complete book in their own rights; the uncanny coincidences that lead to life-changing experiences; the distant scent of a proud and worthy America; and finally, the rise and, ultimately, unavoidably, the fall of an American hero.

The hero in this case is Benjamin Sachs, a writer like so many of Austers heroes, and by the time the reader has finished the first sentence of the book Benjamin Sachs is already dead, not just killed but almost annihilated by a bomb blast. In his familiar style, Auster takes the reader back and forth in his story, giving him from time to time a hint of what is to follow or sometimes going back to important moments already mentioned before and giving them a new perspective, creating layer upon layer of interpretation of what really happened - and ultimately questioning the notion that one is ever able to know what really happened. At one point the first person narrator Peter Aaron (a writer, unsurprisingly, sharing Austers initials) proposes that perhaps two different stories can be true at the same time.

One of the most intriguing characters in the book is Maria Turner, an undefined artist whose work centers on the act of observation. Her projects include photographing meetings with friends, posing as a stripper, shadowing strangers and paying a private detective to shadow her. This is Auster at his best: he mentions a few projects in passing, leaving the reader to fill in the details for himself.

Both these strategies, the layering and the compact miniature portraits, give Leviathan and other Auster novels their richness in detail: 245 (densely printed) pages that seem to hold as much information as classics twice that length. Despite all this, the reader never feels overwhelmed by the details, the novel doesn't seem to have a complicated structure, the storyline is clear and, despite the mystery, straightforward. The ability to be both complex, post-modern, even experimental and at the same time compelling, clear and convincing make Auster one of the greatest living writers, and Leviathan an incomparable experience to read. ( )

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The protagonist dies in the first sentence of this novel. What follows is an account of the events leading up to this. This does not sound very exciting at first. However, Auster manages to make it very much so. As the story unfolds the protagonists doom does not seem as inevitable as in a Kafka novel, yet his fate looms all the more heavily as the reader already knows it.
Very cleverly written and enjoyable. ( )

Highly enjoyable... I don't think the ending quite did justice to the build up but it's a small criticism. I love the way the plots of his earlier novels unfold and the conscious creation of an almost real world... e.g. the author within the book being so similar in name to Auster himself. ( )

If Auster would not have written "The Book of Illusions" I'd vote for "Leviathan" as his all-time masterpiece. It is a wonderful story, that is told in a warm tone, that touches you and lets you truly feel what is going on in the person who is telling the story. A perfect book. ( )