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Ratings23
Average rating4.2
15
Ratings23
Average rating4.2
'A masterpiece.' Daily Mail 'Absorbing and immersive . . . the author's greatest novel.' FT SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017 On March 3rd, 1947, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson's life will take four simultaneous but entirely different paths. Family fortunes diverge. Loves and friendships and passions contrast. Each version of Ferguson's story rushes across the fractured terrain of mid-twentieth century America, in this sweeping story of birthright and possibility, of love and the fullness of life itself. 'Remarkable . . . A novel that contains multitudes.' New York Times 'A vast portrait of the turbulent mid-20th century . . . wonderfully, vividly conveyed.' New Statesman
Reviews with the most likes.
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.
2.5 stars. It was long. Loooooonnnngggg. Long. I loved the premise, one protagonist living 4 different possible lives. Yes please! The writing was decent, but it was just too damn long. I stopped caring about the characters and just wanted to get it over with.
Really conflicted about this book. I think it started off well and I could get on board with the premise, but ultimately it felt over-stuffed. It was way too long, I think that the author tried to do far too much and the second half just trailed off. I don't have a problem at all with long books, but this didn't really managed to sustain the storyline and it got a bit confusing. Due to the focus being on the first half of the protagonist's (plural) lives, and having to avoid making the book even longer, Archie ended up a quite insufferable child prodigy at times, and world events and cultural references ended up as large lists of books that he read, women he slept with or things that happened. I would've given it four stars but I HATED the ending, it was just too smugly clever for it's own good (much like the protagonist I suppose).
Auster's use of duration makes you deeply and uncomfortably aware of the parallel lives you're not leading. In his 4 versions of 1 life story, anything that you think should stick is on shifting ground (sexuality, broad strokes of human relations, lifelong careers all provide to be results of banal contingencies) and anything arbitrary can have staying power (liking films lol). There are two endings. One is weak - to be vague, he briefly suggests that the 1,000 pages you've just read are a matter of ‘epistemology' rather than ‘ontology', and that spoils the meal. Auster has always been too cool (read: undisciplined) to care about the coherence of the random narrative devices he lobs over to his readers - they often do not fit in the novel, they are just novel. That is the sense in which he is a post modernist (the rest of his work reads very modernist). The other is strong - after 1,000 pages on the absurd twists and turns that violently stich together one already above average life, he shows us there are true men of agency and destiny who fuck shit up for the rest of us because they are simply too powerful.
