Beginning with the deconstructed detective novels of the New York Trilogy, Paul Auster has proved himself to be one of the most adventurous writers in contemporary fiction. In book after book, he seems compelled to reinvent his style from scratch. Yet he always returns to certain preoccupations--most notably, solitude and coincidence--and these themes get a powerful workout in this early memoir. In the first half, "Portrait of an Invisible Man," Auster comes to terms with the death of his father, and as he investigates this elusive figure, he makes a rather shocking (and enlightening) discovery about his family's history. The second half, "The Book of Memory," finds the author on more abstract ground, toying with the entwined metaphors of coincidence, translation, solitude, and language. But here, too, the autobiographical element gives an extra kick to Auster's prose and keeps him from sliding off into armchair aesthetics. An eloquent, mesmerizing book.


The New York Times Book Review
Moving, delicately perceived portraits of lives and relationships.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

So begins The Invention of Solitude, Paul Auster's moving and personal meditation on fatherhood. The first section, "Portrait of an Invisible Man," reveals Auster's memories and feelings after the death of his father, a distant, undemonstrative, almost cold man. As he attends to his father's business affairs and sifts through his effects, Auster uncovers a sixty-year-old family murder mystery that sheds light on his father's elusive character. In "The Book of Memory," the perspective shifts from Auster's identity as son to his role as father. Through a mosaic of images, coincidences, and associations, the narrator, "A," contemplates his separation from his son, his dying grandfather, and the solitary nature of storytelling and writing.

SYNOPSIS

Paul Auster's book starts with an event at once ordinary and unique. . .His father, after a divorce and 15 years of living alone in a big house in New Jersey, 'in the best of health, not even old, with no history of illness,' suddenly died. . . .It overwhelmed [Paul] not only with shock but also with a desperate need to examine at last his memory of the man who had been his father . . . .Solitude starts with. . .Auster's urge to save his father's life from vanishing along with his father. It leads initially to an evocation of his father's conduct and oddities, a reconstruction made of remembered scraps and impressions.—The New York Times

FROM THE CRITICS

W. S. Merwin - The New York Times

The clearest and most telling passages...seem to have emerged more or less as they are out of the guiding impulse....Mr. Auster...turns from his subject to an examination of the attempt to write about it, self-consciously tracing a self-consciousness that occasionally affects the style and form of his account without benefiting them....The mode....is often obtrusive in this book, but it suggests that much of the story has yet to be told.

New York Newsday

...Integrates heart and intellect, sensation and speculation.

W S. Merwin - The New York Times

The clearest and most telling passages...seem to have emerged more or less as they are out of the guiding impulse....Mr. Auster...turns from his subject to an examination of the attempt to write about it, self-consciously tracing a self-consciousness that occasionally affects the style and form of his account without benefiting them....The mode....is often obtrusive in this book, but it suggests that much of the story has yet to be told.

New York Newsday

...Integrates heart and intellect, sensation and speculation.

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