The Book of Illusions - Softcover

Auster, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571212182 ISBN 13: 9780571212187

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2003

Synopsis

One crease along spine, small dog ears to front cover. Spine is tight, covers clean, text is unmarked. 1st ed., 1st printing.

About this title

Review

Vermont professor David Zimmer is a broken man. The protagonist of Paul Auster's 10th novel, The Book of Illusions, hits a period in which life seemed to be working aggressively against him. After his wife and sons are killed in an airplane crash, Zimmer becomes an alcoholic recluse, fond of emptying his bottle of sleeping pills into his palm, contemplating his next move. But one night, while watching a television documentary, Zimmer's attention is caught by the silent-film comedian Hector Mann, who had disappeared without a trace in 1929 and who was considered long-dead. Soon, Zimmer begins work on a book about Mann's newly discovered films (copies of which had been sent, anonymously, to film archives around the world). The spirit of Hector Mann keeps David Zimmer alive for a year. When a letter arrives from someone claiming to be Hector Mann's wife, announcing that Mann had read Zimmer's book and would like to meet him, it is as if fate has tossed Zimmer from one hand to the other: from grief and loss to desire and confusion.

Although film images are technically "illusions," this deft and layered novel is not so much about conscious illusion or trickery as about the traces we leave behind us: words, images, memories. Children are one obvious trace, but in this book, they are not allowed to carry their parents forward. They die early: Hector Mann losing his 3-year-old son to a bee sting just as David Zimmer has lost his two sons in the crash. The second half of The Book of Illusions is given over to a love affair, and to Zimmer's attempt to save something of Hector Mann, and of the others he has loved. In the end, what really survives of us on earth--what flickering immortality we are permitted--is left to the reader to surmise. --Regina Marler

About the Author

Paul Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey in the United States in 1947. He graduated from Columbia University with an MA degree. After returning to New York from Paris in 1974, he began his writing career. Throughout the 1970s he wrote mainly poetry and essays which appeared in various magazines including the New York Review of Books. During the 1980s he concentrated on prose writing. He is the author of nine novels, including The New York Trilogy, In the Country of Last Things, The Invention of Solitude, Moon Palace, The Music of Chance, Leviathan, Mr Vertigo and Timbuktu. He also edited the best-selling True Tales of American Life, the NPR National Story Project anthology. He is married with two children and lives in Brooklyn.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0571212182
• ISBN 13: 9780571212187
• Binding: Paperback