Mounir

Sunset Park follows a small gang of young adults in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and features many Auster hallmarks. It's largely set in New York City, is full of baseball trivia, and lots of intertextual references. I found Sunset Park to be a mostly okay novel, if a little unfocused. The story changes perspectives frequently, often moving away from the most interesting characters to check in with someone else.

My first big gripe is that the protagonist is a far fetched character if there ever was one. He is excessively gloomy and stubborn, while also being completely magnetic to every other character. I just didn't find him to be at all believable, even in Auster's fantasy land.

Another problem to me was the prevalence of inappropriate relationships between minors and adults. Several different characters had sexual relationships with teenagers that were ultimately justified by the story. Auster acknowledges the weirdness of it, but dismisses it. It feels like he wasn't sure why exactly these relationships are inappropriate.

As other reviews have said, the biggest problem comes at the very end. The ending is extremely abrupt, bleak, and ambiguous. It really soured me on the whole book that came before.

I would give this book a pass. There are some nice moments, but I found it to be the weakest Auster novel I've read.

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store felt like a messy, contrived ramble. There are countless characters who are given extensive backstories that all tie into the main plot somehow. Instead of giving things a realistic or fleshed out feel, it made the plot feel like a Rube Goldberg machine of confidences.

At the center of much of this plot was some sort of water conspiracy that I never really got my head around. I'm sure it all lines up somehow, but I just couldn't convince myself to get invested in wells and pipes and city water.

Perhaps the most infuriating parts of this book were the admittedly very occasional rants about modern day America. Out of nowhere in a book set in 1936, the author starts lecturing us on the evils of cell phones. In general, I think this book tries to hard to be about important things, but it's just too broad to go into meaningful depth.

I very much enjoyed “The Violin Conspiracy,” but this book was a big let down for me. While the book engages with important ideas and themes like racism and whitewashing of history and so on, I found that it didn't hold together well as a novel. One issue I had that was probably unique to me is that I am far too close to much of the subject matter. As a musician married to an archivist, the tiniest flaws in accuracy stuck out to me (such as using gloves to handle historical paper documents). Of course, each individual flaw is hardly a deal breaker, but taken in aggregate, I felt that they undermined the characters and the story.

Generally speaking, I found many of the characters broad and flat, almost archetypical. Perhaps the worst of all is Josephine herself, who I felt very much lined up with the Autistic Savant trope/stereotype. At the same time, I found that her synesthetic descriptions of music just didn't read as something I could imagine any actual musician saying or doing. Maybe it's an unfair critique, but it just felt inauthentic to me.

I think that's what most of my reaction to this book boils down to. The Violin Conspiracy was clearly based on Slocumb's own experiences as a black musician in the modern era, at least in part. As a result, it came across as more authentic to me. Symphony of Secrets just felt more contrived to me in order to serve the message Slocumb was trying to get across.

Black Cake starts off promising with an enigmatic premise. Two estranged adult siblings learn that their dead mother wasn't who they thought she was. It was interesting and engaging to watch the story unravel at first, but the second half of the book really suffers from trying to do too much at once. As other reviewers have mentioned, the author addresses a whole host of social and political issues from the perspectives of numerous characters. I really felt that the plot started to drag and we had too many digressions. It feels like the author didn't want even a single loose end, but many of the resolutions felt contrived to me. Some questions don't need an answer, especially if the answer is obvious or unremarkable.

Saunders more or less aims to recreate one of his upper level literature classes in this book. He takes you through some classic Russian short stories and gives his analysis and opinions. It starts out a little dry, but it's certainly worth sticking with, especially if you are interested in the craft of writing. As a musician and composer myself, I found it to be a fascinating look into another medium and how artists in that medium operate. Saunders is direct and concise, while still offering beautiful prose. His writing goes a long way to make stories from another time and another culture enjoyable and relatable to modern audiences.

Whether or not you enjoy this book, like many thrillers, will probably come down to the ending and resolution. Most of the book moves along quickly ramping up the tension and suspense as we switch between the mother and daughter's perspectives. There are some interesting themes in the book, though they are not explored in much detail. I did find the characters engaging and relatable. The ending, however, left a sour taste in my mouth. Things became ridiculous to the point of parody just at the very end. Still, I mostly enjoyed the book.

This is my third Auster read after 4 3 2 1 and The New York Trilogy. I've really enjoyed all of these works. Moon Palace is a quirky, dreamlike narrative following Marco Stanley Fogg through a handful of strange episodes. Without giving much away about the plot (though the plot is perhaps not important), I think this book is a very charming read. Auster seems fascinated with a few themes (landscape paintings, the moon, fathers and sons), and he turns them around again and again. It was a pleasure to read, though it may not be for everyone.

The Overstory is really a lengthy love letter to trees more than it is a novel. Almost everything in the book is tied to trees in one way or another. The characters and plot all seem secondary to this tree theme. At the same time, though, the book follows nine different characters. It can be hard to keep them all straight and stay invested in all of them. Really my biggest complaint is that the book is probably twice as long as it needs to be to tell the same story. You'll find yourself reading a loving and vivid description of a tree or a laundry list of tree facts about every 10 pages. However beautifully written, these tree digressions wear thin after some time. The book is spread so thin across its many characters that many of them felt flat to me.

Despite all my complaints, the beginning of the book works pretty well as a collection of short stories. I think you also get the overall message that we should respect trees more from just those first 150 or so pages.

I don't think this book will stay with me for long, but it was an enjoyable ride. I think it holds together well and is worth a shot

This book is definitely not for everyone, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's incredibly long and very slowly paced, but it's also intricately detailed, and methodically planned. On one level, it's a tale about the four different ways a young man's life could go. On another level, it's a vivid picture of life in New York in the 1960s, with special emphasis placed on political and social turmoil. It's also a bit of a love letter to literature, poetry, and the act of writing. Perhaps the most compelling part of the book to me were the vividly realized characters. It was hard to imagine that they were all simply inventions from Auster's mind and not real people. It may be difficult for some readers to commit to such a long and slow read, but if you're willing to live in this world for a long time, Auster will take you on an interesting and compelling journey.