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Loading... The Brooklyn Follies (2005)by Paul Auster
![]() No current Talk conversations about this book. 264 It is never too late to restart your life. Nathan thought he will have a quiet retirement but it is not so. He reconnected with his nephew and niece, who both rebuilt their lives too. A fast and snappy read, I especially like the tone of the book. There were also musings about life, which I could identify with. Paul Auster, where have you been all my life? I loved this book, from the narrator to the incredible stories - it was all so lifelike. Such a great message for us "older" folk - you never know what lies around the corner. Now I have a new obsession to read all his other stuff. I am daunted by the page numbers of his new one but I will persevere. Paul Auster is one of my favourite authors. His unbridled fantasy enables him to create hope in every novel that starts out from misery.
Nathan Glass ha sobrevivido a un cáncer de pulmón y a un divorcio después de treinta y tres años de matrimonio, y ha vuelto a Brooklyn, el lugar donde nació y pasó su infancia. Quiere vivir allí lo que le queda de su 'ridícula vida'. Hasta que enfermó era un próspero vendedor de seguros; ahora que ya no tiene que ganarse la vida, piensa escribir El libro de las locuras de los hombres. Contará todo lo que pasa a su alrededor, todo lo que le ocurre y lo que se le ocurre, y hasta algunas de las historias –caprichosas, disparatadas, verdaderas locuras– de personas que recuerda. Comienza a frecuentar el bar del barrio, el muy austeriano Cosmic Diner, y está casi enamorado de la camarera, la casada e inalcanzable Marina. Y va también a la librería de segunda mano de Harry Brightman, un homosexual culto y contradictorio, que no es ni remotamente quien dice ser. Belongs to Publisher SeriesEl balancí [Edicions 62] (522) Keltainen kirjasto (389) Keltainen pokkari (19) Is contained inAwardsDistinctions
"Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, the retired life insurance salesman seeks only solitude and anonymity. Then Nathan finds his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, working in a local bookstore - a far cry from the brilliant academic career he'd begun when Nathan saw him last. Tom's boss is the charismatic Harry Brightman, whom fate has also brought to the "ancient kingdom of Brooklyn, New York." Through Tom and Harry, Nathan's world gradually broadens to include a new set of acquaintances - not to mention a stray relative or two - and leads him to a reckoning with his past." "Among the many twists in the plot are a scam involving a forgery of the first page of The Scarlet Letter, a disturbing revelation that takes place in a sperm bank, and an impossible, utopian dream of a rural refuge. Meanwhile, the wry and acerbic Nathan has undertaken something he calls The Book of Human Folly, in which he proposes "to set down in the simplest, clearest language possible an account of every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I had committed during my long and checkered career as a man." But life takes over instead, and Nathan's despair is swept away as he finds himself more and more implicated in the joys and sorrows of others."--BOOK JACKET. No library descriptions found. |
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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I finally finished it after a couple of weeks not reading it, but it's a problematic read. I liked the earlier parts when it's just the dropout PhD student and his uncle. Later on, it wasn't as, let's say 'literary'. I liked for the novel to have been more bookish. There's also a strange temporal disorientation I felt reading it. It felt 70s-ish, that is, the novel is set in the early 2000s, but it did not feel like that. It felt decades older. I guess the details provided weren't that convincing for me. Also, there's too much violence and suffering that was heaped upon this one character that I felt at times I could not go on reading the book. Just one depressing episode after another. I felt it was needlessly cruel. Nevertheless, there are little gems scattered throughout. The story about Wittgenstein was something I did not know before. I thought it was very sad and poignant. The uncle's project was also interesting. It had the right amount of literary whimsy in it that I like. /// Overall, not the best Auster I've read, but it has its moments with interesting characters and literary details. (