Sunset Park (original 2010; edition 2011)

I'm a big fan of Paul Auster but I was somewhat disappointed by this one, especially by the ending which seemed implausible but not in a typical Auster way..I mean, this wasn't written with the same postmodern tinges but more with the notion of my generation's sense of floating by with a slightly more meaningful main character trying to overcome a major incident in his life that caused him to separate himself from his family for a period of years.

The strengths of this novel is that it delved into some interesting characters and intricacies of their personalities. (Most of these characters are squatters in their 20s and 30s in Sunset Park, Brooklyn but some are part of the older generation and are mainly writers). It's a portrait of a generation overall, too...our hopes, our goals, our despairing moments too even when we happen to be at a sort of standstill in some ways. There are certainly some interesting things that these characters feel and think and that is something Auster seems to always bring to the table. The major deficit is that it just doesn't live up to his other works overall. The style isn't doing anything new or innovative and the topic isn't altogether adventurous for him. At the end, you just sort of feel like, "That's it? Really?"


A bit of a let down to me, I'm afraid. Much more recommended by him is The Brooklyn Follies or City of Glass.


Memorable Quotes:

pg. 68 "He closes his eyes...in the darkness behind his lids, he sees himself as a black speck in a world made of snow."

pg. 145 "He remembers Renzo as a young, young writer just out of college, living in a forty-nine-dollar-a-month apartment on the Lower East Side, one of those tenement railroad flats with a tub in the kitchen and six thousand cockroaches holding political conventions in every cupboard..."

pg. 190 "If all the sixty-year-old broads come across as bizarre looking thirty-year-olds, who's going to be left to play the mothers and the grandmothers?"

pg 216 "The human body is strange and flawed and unpredictable. The human body has many secrets, and it does not divulge them to anyone, except those who have learned to wait...the human body can be apprehended but it cannot be comprehended..."

pg. 266-267 "We do not grow stronger as the years advance. The accumulation of sufferings and sorrows weakens our capacity to endure more sufferings and sorrows, and since sufferings and sorrows are inevitable, even a small setback in life can resound with the same force as a major tragedy when we are young." ( )

This was one of my Brattle Book Shop purchases in Boston, and I started reading it on the plane ride home. It drew me in immediately. We begin in the financially troubled times of 2008 with Miles Heller. In his 20s, he lives in Florida and trashes out foreclosed houses. Tragic events in his past have caused him to flee his NYC home and avoid his parents. His only joy comes from his relationship with a girl he met in the park, but then he has to hit the road again and leave her behind. He ends up back in NYC, in an abandoned house in Sunset Park, and there the perspective shifts. We see events through the eyes of Miles' friends in Sunset Park and through the eyes of his parents. Despite the shifting perspective, a consistent mood permeates this book. The financial difficulties are matched by difficulties in the characters personal lives. Their lack of a permanent home is matched by a similar tenuousness in their identities. They are desparately searching for something or someone to connect with - a dissertation, a girlfriend, art, old typewriters. But just when they begin to figure things out, their foundation shifts again.

Despite its dark tone, I thought this book was very well written. It has a bit of plot, but mostly it creates the feeling of searching for an identity, a purpose, and then dealing with the roadblocks in your way. It is heartbreaking in places and hopeful in others, but it always feels honest. ( )

The first thing that struck me about this book is how concerned it is with the time it was written and set. The recession is always in the background; the central character's job is clearing abandoned belongings out of repossessed homes, later several characters live squatting in an abandoned house. A peripheral character is married to a soldier who is in Iraq, at one point a character idly imagines President Bush and Dick Cheney lined up and shot. These are all background details however: Sunset Park is not overtly political, it is more concerned with its characters.

Auster's characters are very unhappy. They are by degrees lonely, depressed, bored, wounded, suicidal, delusional, stuck, drifting, trapped in the past, or worried about the future. For all that though, they are lovable and believable, and though Auster relates their stories in his bleak, somewhat detached voice, he does love his created people, and their struggles are never simply depressing. They are too interesting and well drawn for that.

This book is about how much people need each another. It shows what happens when they are unable to make connections, the consequences when these connections are actively severed and avoided, and what happens when communication is sought and allowed to resume.

Throughout the book is the insistent reminder that time is not endless, that life is grinding the characters down to their inevitable end: references to Samuel Beckett, funerals, the abandoned house in "Sunset" Park across from the omnipresent cemetery, and the litany of baseball players, some who had lucky lives and some unlucky, whose deaths mark the passage of time throughout the story.

Auster plays just a bit with narrative convention, in fun and interesting ways. The story is told in present tense with no quotation marks, third person from multiple limited points of view that rotate throughout the story. One section is diary entries in second person, and one enticingly takes on the form of a play, adding stage directions halfway through, and eliminating everything else but dialogue. It may only be because one of the characters is an actor, but it also highlights the sad artifice and distance in the conversation.

This is something of a sad novel, though not depressing or manipulative. The inner lives of the characters are fascinating and real, and orbit each other and touch in small and significant ways. I read it in two sittings, and it probably would have been one if I had started earlier in the day. ( )

This was a book group pick for October, and I was pleased that it was picked as I have read Paul Auster in the past, but it was many years ago, and I thought it would be nice read something more recent of his.

I enjoyed this book while I was reading it, and found it a very quick read—the writing just flowed, but on hindsight, maybe I should have tried to read more slowly and savour it.

At the heart of the book we have Miles Heller who is, after ten years, still running away from his part in causing the death of his step-brother and the character analysis by his father and step-mother that he overheard a couple of years later. He's been drifting across the US ever since, but now he finds himself making his way back to New York, to a house in Sunset Park where his friend Bing Nathan is squatting with a couple of other people, whose stories we get to see alongside Miles's. ( )

The Short of It:

Mesmerizing prose with angst at its core. Auster’s skill as a writer somehow conveys all of the insecurities we feel as adults and reminds us that we are vulnerable, fragile individuals.

The Rest of It:

Miles Heller is twenty-eight-years-old and educated, but can’t seem to find the motivation to do anything. Just a few credits shy of getting his degree, he’d rather take odd jobs and ponder life and love than become a productive member of society.

After floundering around for what seems like quite a long time, Miles falls in love with Pilar. Pilar is not yet eighteen which makes her a dangerous obsession. Especially in the eyes of her family, who see the relationship as doomed from day one. After a run-in with Pilar’s sister, Miles escapes to Brooklyn, thinking it would be good to wait until Pilar hits legal age. Then, and only then, will he ask her to marry him.

In Brooklyn, he joins a group of young squatters who are holed up in an abandoned building in an area known as Sunset Park. Living rent-free, they go about their lives, knowing that at any moment, they could be forcibly removed. The precarious nature of their living arrangement is a constant reminder that the future is always moving forward and change is just around the corner.

Set during the 2008 economic collapse, this is a story of love, loss and regret and what it means to be a part of something; be it big or small. The story is mainly character-driven, no huge plot points to speak of, but after just a few pages, I found that I liked Miles quite a bit. He is technically, a good guy. A bit confused and struggling to find himself, but essentially good. Although my life experiences differ from his, I found that I could easily relate to what he was feeling at any given point. I attribute that to Auster’s writing style.

That said, I was completely taken aback by the ending. The ending was appropriate, but it was sudden. There I was, hanging on Auster’s every word, and then poof, the novel ended. What occurred to me later is that although the novel ended, the story continued. Those characters are left to continue on with their lives and as a reader, all I could do was wish them well.

I’ve read one other Auster book, Invisible and I recall a similar feeling with that one, but I liked it very much and I can say the same for this one. Sunset Park wasn’t at all what I expected it to be, but it was well worth the read and to be honest, it’s nice to be surprised once in a while.

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