The Book of Illusions

This is one of the very finest books that I have ever read. It is a stunning achievement, and one does not or cannot walk away from this unmoved. `The Book of Illusions' is an extraordinarily empathetic humanistic novel. Auster writes about identity, love, joy, loss, sadness, and hope. He speaks to the human condition. `The Book of Illusions' provides an in-depth exploration of ones response to human brokenness, human hope, as well as human finitude. These responses are usually not fixed. They change, they grow, they evolve. This book speaks to this. The reader is first introduced to David Zimmer, and it is Zimmer's voice we hear throughout this pitch-perfect novel. Zimmer has recently lost his family in a plane accident. He is unable to function and consequently leaves his position at a local college. Zimmer turns to alcohol spending his days drinking and in solitude. It is the laughter he feels from watching a silent film that brings life back to him. The actor in this silent film is one Hector Mann. Have you ever wondered if comedians are happy people? There are soul-searching, heart wrenching vignettes in this novel. When Zimmer visits a doctor for a prescription, he encounters Dr. Singh. When Dr. Singh listens to Zimmer's heart, he understands. I read that passage a number of times thinking that Auster all but utilizes X-Rays into the human heart. There are many characters in this novel. Alma is one of these, and she has a pronounced birthmark on her face. People usually look at her, and she remarks to Zimmer ....'I knew that that purple blotch would always define me on my face. .....I knew what people were thinking. The birthmark was the test of their humanity. It measured the worth of their souls, and if I worked hard at it, I could see straight into them and know who they were.' [Page 123] We see and feel everything through the eyes of David Zimmer. I willingly went along with Zimmer's journey and had magical experiences. `The Book of Illusions' has everything a reader could possibly want. Auster's prose dances those fluid steps of only a professional. He constantly surprises the reader. Just when one thinks he/she knows where Auster is going, he takes one somewhere else. When I closed this book, I was left pondering immortality. `This life is only a prelude to eternity. For that which we call death is but a pause, in truth a progress into life.' [Seneca] This book will command you to feel. It is unforgettable.

I actually listened to this book read by the author (which I usually don't like), but found it to be excellent on many levels. The audiobook is paced well, and Auster does a good job with the reading -- authors are very often poor at reading their own novels.As to the novel, I was completely drawn into the story, and I like the layered plotting and lack of easy answers. The story concerns a man whose loss of his family has left him shattered. He loses himself in the story of a vanished silent film star, and in researching this man, he is brought into a relationship with a damaged woman. Auster's writing is incredible, and the allusions to Hollywood reporting, Hawthorne's short stories, and ultimately to the nature of illusions are consistently interesting and used well throughout the novel.Initially I avoided the book because I'm not much interested in silent movies, and the jacket blurbs just didn't excite me. Don't make the same mistake I did in putting this off ... and if you commute, listen to the audiobook, it's well worth the price.

Auster is an extraordinary writer -- his prose spare and elegant, his focus the shifting shadows between reality and illusion. Never was a book more appropriately titled.The protagonist, academic David Zimmer, has suffered the nearly unimaginable, but quite credible tragedy of losing his family in an air crash. His response is to drink, to shut himself away, and, when briefly re-introduced to his former life, to be appallingly obnoxious.His chosen therapy is to write a book about a forgotten (and as it turns out, disappeared) silent film star. The publication of this study produces the remarkable news that his subject is still alive. The story of his subject Hector's life post-Hollywood mirrors the escape Zimmer himself is trying to make from the awful reality of his own tragedy. The parallels between Zimmer as author and Hector as subject are striking.The resolution of this marvellous novel is both sad and shocking, and yet, as with all Auster's work, there is a note of hope at the end, coupled with the sense that what is real, and what is not, is divided by the thinnest possible line.If this book were judged only on its evocation of the end of the silent movie period, it would be a complete success. Containing, as it does, many layers of complexity built around what we know to be real, imagine to be real, and imagine to be imagined, seen against the backdrop of unforgettable characters whose own reality is compelling, this is an extraodinary novel by a writer at the height of his powers. Read it more than once -- it will repay you many times over.

Hector Mann directed and starred in a handful of silent comedies in the 1920s. He was just beginning to realize his potential as a filmmaker when bad studio management and the introduction of sound --- deadly for a man with a heavy Spanish accent --- ended his career. Shortly thereafter, he disappeared without a trace. Because he was not quite famous, no one, it seems, looked very hard for him. His now obscure films appeal to David Zimmer, a Vermont professor who is slowly and painfully coping with the death of his wife and sons in a plane crash. He throws himself into the few films of Mann's surviving oeuvre and writes the sole definitive work on the films of Hector Mann. The book comes to the attention of Hector Mann's wife, Frieda, and she invites Professor Zimmer to meet the mysterious filmmaker, who is currently dying in New Mexico. Zimmer is suspicious of the offer and refuses to go until he meets Alma, a close connection of the Manns who grew up on the ranch where they shut themselves off from the world. Alma convinces him that not only is Hector Mann alive, but he never stopped making movies.Although the Manns believe that David Zimmer ought to see these films, Hector has ordered that his lifework should be burned within 24 hours of his death, and his time is growing short. One of the many charms of THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS is the stories within the story. These digressions are full of grace and relevance, whether anecdotes or film plots. Alma tells David what happened to Hector, and his life story is full of surprises, turnabouts, and tragedy. It only makes David even more curious to see the films that sprung from such a man, and he conquers his fear of flying to make the trip to New Mexico, unaware that his presence during Hector Mann's last days will act as a catalyst for further misfortune and loss.THE BOOK OF ILLUSIONS is a complex study of loss, with nearly every character wrestling with grief in some fashion. Movie characters don't exist; the dead used to exist, but no longer. Both David Zimmer and Hector Mann find solace in the movies, comfortable in the philosophically parallel planes of the fictional and the dead. One would expect that a book so immersed in pain and self-blame to be very depressing, but it is not. It is lively, fast-paced, and often funny, a celebration of bright images before the screen goes dark. --- Reviewed by Colleen Quinn

Emotionally resonant and intellectually fulfilling, this is probably the most beautiful, fully realized novel of Paul Auster's career. It's sort of like U2's latest album: a masterpiece with heart. Anyway, this is the kind of fiction that today's new writers just can't seem to pull off. The novel contains a metafictional element that is much more interesting than any overtly "postmodern" novel of the last few years, but also infinitely more subtle--any musings on the "nature of narrative" or storytelling are in full service of the plot, which is hopeful and tragic at the same time. Comparisons could be made to Denis Johnson's "The Name of the World," with Auster actually realizing what Johnson attempted. Line by line, the prose of this book is pitch-perfect. Anyone disappointed by recent Auster efforts should be pleased by this return to (top) form.