Invisible

3.5 stars

For the first half or so, I wondered if this was a test: how reprehensible does a person have to be before one abandons him as such? Adam Walker just drags the reader deeper into a moral abyss. You can forgive one thing, excuse another as his age, the era, see another through the lens of insufferable grief. But then he goes a step too far, and there's no telling where else this will go.

But then... we get another perspective, calling into doubt Walker's distasteful confession. And if that part is untrue, is any of it real? Why would he confess to some transgressions, but then make some up? If he is too ill for his memory to be trusted, is any of it real?

The lure proves too much, and Walker's college friend tries to track down show more some truth. He seems to get some... but it only leads to more confusion about the truth of another character.

So... we're left with a bunch of characters we can't really know. If you like beautiful prose and a compelling, if convoluted, storyline, then you'll like this. If you need clear answers to all your questions, walk away from this book. It's not for you. show less

Absolutely brilliant, the best Auster for me. I'm making my way through all his fiction and when I finished this book I thought: I don't want it to finish! I will seriously consider essays, maybe screenplays. And well, after all I still have three more to go.
I picked up this book after two I didn't really enjoy. I needed some good literature to remove this bad aftertaste. And he did it, man, he did it again. Complex characters, jumps in time, the usual story within a story, metaliterature... I loved it.

Este es el Auster que me gusta, el que sabe contar una historia de manera tan fluida que devoras las páginas. Está claro que no llega al nivel de sus primeros trabajos, pero por lo menos no es 'Viajes por el Scriptorium' o 'La vida interior de Martin Frost', que no estaban mal siendo como eran obras menores.

En 'Invisible', Paul Auster va más allá de encajar historias dentro de historias y se mete en una trama que va en un sentido más en espiral, donde te va hundiendo más y más en la historia encajando todos los elementos intrigantes como si se tratase del mecanismo de un reloj.

Estamos en el año 1967. Adam Walker, de 20 años y estudiante de Literatura en Columbia, aspira a convertirse en escritor, poeta para más señas. show more Entonces, durante una fiesta conoce a quien cambiará por completo su vida, Rudolf Born, profesor invitado, y a su insunuante novia, Margot. Todo comienza con una oferta del tal Born, en la que propone a Adam la fundación de una revista literaria en la que él sería el director, todas las decisiones serían suyas... Querría contar más, pero ello no contribuiría al suspense que crea Auster.

Sin ser un trabajo redondo, me ha alegrado mucho el volver a encontrarme al "viejo" Auster. show less

Although I haven't enjoyed much his latest novels (felt like he was getting too repetitive and self-involved), I really liked this one. In a way it brought em back to The New York Trilogy with its meta feel and accomplished story switching between voices and unreliable narrators. I feel like I just finished a puzzle or came out of a labyrinth but I'm not sure I got it all right. Who was telling the truth? Whose memories are reliable after so many years? At the end there are no definitive answers but, for me, it was fun to play.

Auster is one of the most unpredictable contemporary artists, it is virtually impossible to pinpoint a literary style that is truly his. He is also one of the most prolific writers; I keep reading new books by him and I am not halfway through his authorship. Invisible took me by complete surprise. It is a thriller, a meta story of sorts. Reality is clearly in the eyes of the beholder, so is truth. The main character is Adam Walker, a student in New York City who runs into a French professor in 1967 who changes his life and not for the better. We are being told the story in all ways possible: first person singular, second person singular (sic), third person singular, and through an author (Auster?) and the diary notes of another show more character. It all works incredibly well, making Invisible one of the most intriguing books I have read for a long time, a true page turner. It left me with questions more than answers, but it still left me satisfied. show less

This is an odd book. I wasn't sure about it at first. Some of the subject matter makes uncomfortable reading, but it is compellingly written and ends ambiguously. It put me in mind of Heart of Darkness and A Handful of Dust. Not the subject matter so much, but the style. The reportage of the lives of others through the filter of memoirs, perhaps. The truth is not clear cut and the world is a strange place. By the time I reached the end, I had decided that I loved it. And one of the more despicable characters reminded me of a man I once regrettably knew.

I read a somewhat sniffy review of this in the TLS, which suggested this was a meditation on literary form, and obsessed with writing and the pen. On the basis of which I was expecting the worst; of Auster's recent books; "Man In The Dark" was interesting but "Travels in the Scriptorium" was woefully self indulgent. But in fact this book has some of Auster's most powerful and memorable writing. Yes, it plays with form. There are 3 narrators here, and its not often you read a book written in first, second and third person. It is self referential - early in the book the narrator (a writer of course) discusses the problems of finding the right voice, and concludes that sometimes its possible for the author to inject himself into the work show more as a fictional character (just as Auster himself did, memorably, in The New York Trilogy). But this shouldn't take away from a tremendously powerful narrative of loss, the untrustworthiness of memory and the nature of truth.
The dying Adam Walker entusts a manuscript to an old college friend, the skeleton of a book he had hoped to write about 1967, an important year in his life. He presents it as biography, rather than fiction, yet is it? The perspectives of others, from the slippery, shadowy Rudolf Born to his beautiful sister, to the stereotypically free loving, attachment rejecting Margot, to the young and impressionable Cecile, are rather different. At such distance, what is fact, what is fantasy and what is self serving? Trying to pin down "what happened" in this book is like trying to nail jelly to the wall - never the less, the descriptive power of the writing is intense; the chapter "Summer" will stay with you for a long time show less