Man in the Dark

This is the first book I've ever listened to. Usually I listen to music when I'm in the car, but I got a chance to review this on audiobook and I was taking a road trip, so I decided to give this book a listen. It's read by the author, so I knew the reader would probably be sincere and do the book justice. He did. My first impression is that listening to a book is a lot different than reading it. Usually when I read I have some music playing in the background, obviously you can't do that with an audiobook. Also, when I read I become totally absorbed in the book, it's like a whole new world for me, new people, friends, enemies, spies, lies, lovers and so much more, they really entertain me. But when you're listening to a book and driving on a four lane highway at the same time, you can't let the story draw you in so much that you forget what you're doing. Do that and you can be in big trouble. All that being said, how did I find the experience? First off, the story was so intriguing that my trip flew by in nothing flat. Five hours went by like thirty minutes, that's how intriguing seventy-two-year-old August Brill's story was for me. I took it all in and was able to take in the traffic as well. Mr. Brill is old, has a leg that was damaged in an auto accident, so he has difficulty going up the stairs to the top floor in the house he occupies with his daughter and granddaughter. He spends his days with his granddaughter watching old movies, he spends his nights telling himself stories in bed. And one of those stories seems to have created another dimension with living and breathing people in it and they don't appreciate the way Mr. Brill is playing with their lives, so they've appropriated one of his characters and sent him on a mission to kill Mr. Brill, their creator. There, does that sound intriguing? There's lots more to keep you absorbed in this book, audio or otherwise. Mr. Auster knows his stuff, not only is he an excellent writer, but he is certainly one of America's premiere storytellers. His characters live and breath and that's the highest compliment you can pay a storyteller.

This story opens with retired newspaper critic August Brill lying in bed, unable to sleep. He is seventy-two years old, his wife, who he'd married, divorced, then married again, has been taken by cancer. He lives with his daughter Miriam and granddaughter Katya. Miriam is divorced, Katya's husband is dead and she's not over it, will probably never be over it. August and Katya spend their days away watching movies and August spends his nights making up stories in his head, because he can't sleep. And one of his stories is about an American Civil war. Not the war between the Blue and the Grey that occurred over a hundred years ago, but a civil war between the Red and the Blue that happened in 2000 when the Blue States didn't like the outcome of the election. What August doesn't know, or maybe he does, it's his imagniantion, after all, is that what he imagines in his bed is actually taking place in a parallel world and Owen Brick, the object of Brill's imagination, is taken from his sleep and deposited on a battlefield. He's rescued by a sergeant named Serge. Sergeant Serge gives Owen money and sends him to town, where he learns he's been chosen to go back to his dimension and kill Brill. It seems the bosses of this new dimension believe if Brill dies, the war will stop. "But won't their whole world vanish if Brill dies?" Owen asks. They're willing to take the chance, anything to stop the killing. They send Owen back, but he doesn't do it. They come after him, tell him if he fails they'll kill him and his wife. Now it seems Owen has no choice. He has to kill Brill. I will tell you this was one weird story. There were a couple times I wanted to throw the book down, but I didn't, I kept on and now that I'm a week away from the end I find I'm still thinking about Brick, Brill, Katya and her dead husband. This book moved me. I didn't like Brill, didn't much like Brick either. I felt for Katya, cried for her husband. This is a good book. Reviewed by Vesta Irene

This is a short book, only 192 pages. I purchased the book, then was offered the CD to review, which I was glad to get as it's read by the author. He's very good, by the way, both at writing and reading, listening to him I was pulled right into this story about an old man who lies awake at night in the dark. He's a haunted man, crippled by an auto accident, desolate because of the death of his wife. He makes up stories and this book moves back and forth, between the story in the August Brill's (the old man) head and the real story of his life, but as you listen to (or read) the story, you'll have a hard time figuring out just which story is real, maybe both are, maybe neither is in this book about stories within stories within stories. I couldn't put it down, I read it before listening to the CDs and even with the listening, even though I knew everything that was going to happen, I was transfixed, I was a part of this story, almost like August Brill made me up too. I can't recommend this book or audiobook, whichever way you decide to go, highly enough. This is a divine story.

Seventy-two-year-old, ex-writer August Brill lies awake during the night, a victim of insomnia. He entertains himself by telling himself stories. He lives with his daughter and granddaughter in Vermont, his wife has recently passed away and he had a leg damaged in an auto accident. He seems depressed, who could blame him. One of the stories he's been telling himself is of a parallel world and he takes us right into it, makes us believe it's real, maybe it is. In this story we see Owen Brick, who went to bed with his wife, but wakes in a hole in another world. America is at war, millions are being killed and Owen has been selected to go back into his world and kill Brill, because the thinker of the story has actually created it in this parallel world. But Brick's not a killer and therein lies the problem. If he does not kill Brill, then Government guys from the parallel world are going to come through and kill him and his wife. Brick's got a problem, but you won't have one if you read this engaging story. There was one jarring surprise that almost ruined the book for me, but I kept on and read on till the end and I'm glad I did. This is a short and strange story. It'll make you think. It'll make you wonder about those stories you might tell yourself before you fall asleep. This is a good read, I liked it more than I can say. Reviewed by Captain Katie Osborne

August Brill is a man well into the August of his life, a widowered book critic nearly rendered unable to walk by a leg badly shattered in a recent automobile accident. Brill is passing the last of his days (and sleepless nights) with his foryish daughter Miriam and twentyish granddaughter Katya in Miriam's Vermont home. The two women's lives seem nearly as shattered as August's leg: Miriam abandoned by her husband, and Katya suffering from the unexpected death of her boyfriend, Titus Small. Three generations, connected for the moment more by tragedy and loss than by blood and family bonds. As the story's central character, the aging Brill spends his nights awake, struggling not to remember his late wife Sonia by inventing mental stories of other worlds and places. In this instance, his imagined tale focuses on a character named Owen Brick who wakes up one day dressed in military uniform and lying at the bottom of a nine-foot deep cylinder. Brick has somehow been spirited into what seems to be the Worcester, Massachusetts of a parallel world. In that parallel America, the World Trade Center towers still stand and there is no war in Iraq. Instead, America has been wracked by civil war and secession resulting from the Supreme Court's decision to seat George W. Bush as President in 2000. Millions have died already, and civil war rages on at an increasingly devastating pace. Brick's role, he discovers through the now-adult, parallel world version of his greatest high school crush, is to return to "our world" as an assassin. His target is none other than August Brill, the person whose nighttime story inventions are the driving force in the ruination of that parallel America. At one level, the Brick character and parallel world story line seem little more than Brill's wish to escape his loneliness and his unhappiness over Sonia's death by cancer. Brick in that view represents a suicidal wish fulfillment by some imagined other, an external agent, suggesting that Brill cannot bring himself to commit suicide by his own hand. The Brick story continues to evolve and alternate with bits of Brill's until Brill, lying in bed in the dark of a dark Vermont night, brings it to a halting end. A few minutes after, Katya joins her grandfather in his bed and the full stories of father, daughter, and granddaughter unfold like another tale told, only this time orally. Of course, the reality of Brill's story, and that of his granddaughter Katya, sheds entirely new light on the emotional and psychological rationale behind Brill's invention of the Owen Brick, parallel world story. The very notions of secession and civil war align with the events of Brill's life and even those of Miriam and Katya. Marriage, unfaithfulness, divorce, reconciliation, career striving - all can be seen as forms of struggle, secession or territorial aggression, and damaged landscapes. As he did in his last novella, TRAVELS IN THE SCRIPTORIUM, Paul Auster once again plays with the creati