ISBN: 9780571240753

Synopsis August Brill, an elderly book critic, lies awake in the dark, unable to sleep. Elsewhere in the house are his daughter, Miriam, and granddaughter, Katya, each with her own reasons for lying awake and watchful in the long Vermont night.

Bookclub Review August Brill, 72 years old, is lying in bed recovering after an accident.
Unable to sleep, he thinks up a story of a parallel America at war with itself ever since the controversial elections of 2000. His invented world reveals his own state of mind: here is a man literally and pyschologically in the dark as he battles grief and regret as well as insomnia. Sharing the same house, his daughter and granddaughter each have their own losses to cope with.

What the group thought:

A fiery discussion was held at the bookshop last Thursday evening. Most of us thoroughly enjoyed the book and admired Paul Auster’s masterful writing. The book’s reflections on grief and loss had an unexpected crescendo which left most of us stunned: Auster’s way of saying that some things cannot be made right, only endured. The group felt that the insomnia of the grandfather was well captured and the voice of Paul Auster came through bright and clear, as though he was talking to us and telling us the story directly.
Some members of the club considered that ‘the story within a story’ was less convincing and found the multiple layers within the book disjointed and annoying. Overall, opinion was divided between those who saw the book as one of their personal ‘top five’ and those who wished that they had not read the book at all. So reader make up your own mind….