From Publishers Weekly
Imagine an American city in the near future, populated almost wholly by street dwellers, squatters in ruined buildings, scavengers for subsistence. Suicide clubs offer interesting ways to die, for a fee, but the rich have fled with their jewels, and those who are left survive on what little cash trade-in centers will give them for the day's pickings. This enthralling, dreamlike fable about a peculiarly recognizable society, now in the throes of entropy, focuses on the plight of a young woman, Anna Blume. Anna has memories of a gentler life, but comes to the city in a "charity ship" to hunt for her missing brother. She first finds shelter with a madman and his wife and later experiences a brief idyll with a writer, Samuel Farr.Together they live in the deteriorating splendor of the marbled public library. Promise is ultimately rekindled when the survivors consider taking to the road as magiciansan action implying that art and illusion can save. Auster, an accomplished stylist, creates a tone that deftly combines matter-of-factness and estrangement. The eerie quality is heightened by the device of a narrator who learns everything from Anna's journal. Auster's The New York Trilogy is soon to be reissued in Penguin paperback. Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
In a book-length letter home, Anna Blume reports that her search for a long-lost brother has brought her to a vast, unnamed city that is undergoing a catastrophic economic decline. Buildings collapse daily, driving huge numbers of citizens into the streets, where they starve or die of exposureif they aren't murdered by other vagrants first. Government forces haul away the bodies, and licensed scavengers collect trash and precious human waste. Weird cults form around the most popular methods of suicide. Anna tries to help, but the charity group she joins quickly runs out of supplies and has to close its doors. A number of post-apocalyptic novels have been published recently; Auster's, one of the best, is distinguished by an uncanny grasp of the day-to-day realities of homelessness. This is a scary but highly relevant book. Edward B. St. John, Loyola Marymount Univ. Lib., Los AngelesCopyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From AudioFile
Vanessa Redgrave is not so much an actress as a force of nature; her screen presence radiates a disturbing potency impossible to ignore. Here she reins it in to deliver an appropriately detached portrayal of a sheltered young Jewess cast on her own devices in a nightmarish world of terror and entropy. While playing against the unremitting horror of the first-person narration, she vividly impersonates the characters in dialogue scenes. If she errs, it's by relying on her overflowing treasure chest of technique instead of penetrating Auster's novel to its depths. Y.R. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
In the Country of Last Things ANNOTATION
"Powerful, original, imaginative... ."--Washington Post
FROM THE PUBLISHER
A postapocalyptic quest set against a backdrop of urban deprivation. The masses are homeless, theft is so rampant it is no longer a crime, and death -- by arranging either suicide or assassination -- is the only way out. Buildings collapse daily, driving huge numbers of citizens into the streets, where they starve or die of exposure -- if they aren't murdered by other vagrants first. Government forces haul away the bodies, and licensed scavengers collect trash and precious human waste. Weird cults form around the most popular methods of suicide. Anne Blume comes to this unnamed city in search of her brother and finds friendship -- even love -- amid the devastation.
FROM THE CRITICS
Washington Post
Powerful, original, imaginative... .
Publishers Weekly
Imagine an American city in the near future, populated almost wholly by street dwellers, squatters in ruined buildings, scavengers for subsistence. Suicide clubs offer interesting ways to die, for a fee, but the rich have fled with their jewels, and those who are left survive on what little cash trade-in centers will give them for the day's pickings. This enthralling, dreamlike fable about a peculiarly recognizable society, now in the throes of entropy, focuses on the plight of a young woman, Anna Blume. Anna has memories of a gentler life, but comes to the city in a ``charity ship'' to hunt for her missing brother. She first finds shelter with a madman and his wife and later experiences a brief idyll with a writer, Samuel Farr.Together they live in the deteriorating splendor of the marbled public library. Promise is ultimately rekindled when the survivors consider taking to the road as magiciansan action implying that art and illusion can save. Auster, an accomplished stylist, creates a tone that deftly combines matter-of-factness and estrangement. The eerie quality is heightened by the device of a narrator who learns everything from Anna's journal.
Library Journal
In a book-length letter home, Anna Blume reports that her search for a long-lost brother has brought her to a vast, unnamed city that is undergoing a catastrophic economic decline. Buildings collapse daily, driving huge numbers of citizens into the streets, where they starve or die of exposureif they aren't murdered by other vagrants first. Government forces haul away the bodies, and licensed scavengers collect trash and precious human waste. Weird cults form around the most popular methods of suicide. Anna tries to help, but the charity group she joins quickly runs out of supplies and has to close its doors. A number of post-apocalyptic novels have been published recently; Auster's, one of the best, is distinguished by an uncanny grasp of the day-to-day realities of homelessness. This is a scary but highly relevant book. Edward B. St. John, Loyola Marymount Univ. Lib., Los Angeles
AudioFile - Yuri Rasovsky
Vanessa Redgrave is not so much an actress as a force of nature; her screen presence radiates a disturbing potency impossible to ignore. Here she reins it in to deliver an appropriately detached portrayal of a sheltered young Jewess cast on her own devices in a nightmarish world of terror and entropy. While playing against the unremitting horror of the first-person narration, she vividly impersonates the characters in dialogue scenes. If she errs, itﾽs by relying on her overflowing treasure chest of technique instead of penetrating Austerﾽs novel to its depths. Y.R. ﾽAudioFile, Portland, Maine
Washington Post
Powerful, original, imaginative... .
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING
The business of scratching around in the wreckage, be it of the metropolis, of language or of consciousness, always runs the risk of being boring. Auster declines the risk and has tediousness forced on him anyway. The incidents and objects he describes betray an increasing desire to entertain the reader, but this is matched by their increasing insubstantiality; these 'last things' evoke no pathos, and, trading heavily on the Grand Guignol fascination which apocalyptic visions tend to elicit, the novel stands somewhere between Protect and Survive and Being and Nothingness — Lawrence Norfolk
The subject and tone of this novel are reminiscent of Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz and Tim O'Brien's The Nuclear Age; the style and emphasis on philosophical statement will challenge the reader. . . . The author places his protagonist in ethical dilemmas that challenge the usual moral order. The epistolary form poses some limitations: little action, abrupt transitions between episodes, and little character development; nevertheless, a well-written novel, which avoids the usual stereotypes of the postnuclear destruction novel and presents a darker-than-usual moral vision. — E.G. Sandvick
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