Customer Reviews

The Brooklyn Follies: A Novel

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2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Nathan is a retired life insurance salesman who has lung cancer that has gone into remission. Recently divorced, the assets split amicably, he decides to go back to his roots and live the rest of his life in Brooklyn. He rents a flat in his old neighbourhood and slowly settles into what seems to be a quiet retirement. Nathan has also started to write a book of sorts, "The Book of Human Folly", an account of every blunder, embarrassment, idiocy and inane act he has committed and experienced throughout his long life. These tales of life's absurdities are also about other people, revealing the pure folly of the human condition. The narrative for the most part centres on Nathan's nephew, Tom, a failed academic who has given up on life, where they coincidentally meet in Brooklyn, and grow to be good friends. This short summary may appear boring, a book about normal people living mundane lives, but that's what makes this novel so good, the mundane becomes the miraculous, the ordinary the extraordinary.

Paul Auster is arguably one of the greatest living American writers working today. Reading his novel's is a captivating journey into the extraordinary, a glimpse at possibilities, an opportunity to view the world from a different perspective, and in some cases, one changes and sees life differently, a sometimes for the better.

I'll never forget my first Auster novel, "A New York Trilogy" becoming totally submerged in a world so alien, so odd and so fascinating, that it was astounding to discover an author with such talent and erudition. This writer had something special happening, thus I read everything I could get my hands on: "Moon Palace", "The Music of Chance", "Leviathan" and "Mr.Vertigo", which happens to be one of the most original tales to come out in the last twenty-five years. "The Brooklyn Follies" had me enthralled from the first chapter, wanting to know more about these characters, their talents, loves and mishaps, coming to the conclusion, that we are by and large a strange species, and at bottom, it is our need for companionship, love if you will, that gets us into trouble but also keeps us struggling, at times making life worth living, and sometimes a living hell.

Nathan is at worst a cynic, although a man who really wants to do the right thing, help his apathetic nephew, reconnect with his only daughter, innocently flirt with the married waitress at his lunchtime haunt, (which has dire consequences) and write about the human condition. Nathan is everyman, a good soul and has grown not to take life too seriously, which he has discovered comes with age.

This is a compelling novel about ordinary people with dreams and aspirations, disappointments and triumphs, embarrassments and success - a depiction of the modern human condition with all its craziness, stupidity and humour.

An excellent novel.

In this book, Auster gives us a slight variation on his usual style. This book is more jovial, more amusing and less intellectual than most of his prior work, but with no less impact. Perhaps the jovial authorial style is relative to the fact that Auster is trying to point out that our lives are fun, sadness and Folly.

Our protagonist is a 59 year old retired insurance salesman who decides after a bout with cancer to get divorced and to move back to Brooklyn, the home of his youth. During his first several months as a returning resident of Brooklyn, Nathan engages in writing a book called "Human Follies." In fact, it is much of his own folly he tries to prepare to put in his book. And yet, through the process of living in Brooklyn and meeting people he knew and did not know, Auster elucidates their lives as seen by Nathan and Nathan interprets for us how the events are both folly and serious.

While the story is based on a family in crisis, it is also based on Brooklyn, morality, politics, sex and love; it is also based on the follies of the human mind. Auster shows that folly is a part of all people's lives, and that so is the business of living. The characters in this book are involved with many messy life mistakes, but the book is also about redemption. Those who have thrown their lives to the winds of Folly, can at some point, reclaim their lives and go on. Perhaps the goal is to be happy, no matter what one's life and Follies represent. If one is happy, then what more can one really and truly ask of life?

The book is recommended for all readers who are observers of life and its various vicissitudes. It is intense in its observations, but easy to read and absorb. Once again, Auster has created a true masterpiece of modern literature. All readers who are looking for a clue to the life of fun and folly should read this book. It has serious and significant enlightenments on the ways in which people meet the challenges of life, some surviving, and some not surviving. Truly a great read, it is highly recommended.

The Brooklyn Follies is ultimately an optimistic novel, which makes it quite different from the dark early work which made me an Auster fan. Sure, there is sadness and despair, but they are defeated in the end - all but one of the characters manages to regain their lives and to find a kind of happiness. (The one who doesn't dies, but his death is the catalyst for others' redemption.) Auster's native Brooklyn is painted with an affection which manages not to be sentimental, and the characters, despite their quirks and weaknesses, are likeable because they are human and because they can change for the better. The book advocates community and humanity as positive forces. It ends minutes before the attack on the World Trade Centre and one is left with the strong feeling that even this awful event will not undo the transformations and renewed lives we have just read about. New Yorkers (and indeed Americans generally) refused to be cowed by 9/11 and perhaps this book tells us why - because beneath the grime of politics and commerce lies something altogether more worthwhile that can perhaps change America for the better.

I liked The Brooklyn Follies, but not for the same reasons that I liked The New York Trilogy or Moon Palace or The Book of Illusions. It's a gentler novel than any of those, without the hard edge, without the dark, slightly surreal veil. Read it to cheer yourself up, or to inspire you to re-engage with the world. It's a book to be enjoyed, so enjoy it.

The year 2005 seems to have been an unusually "out of genre" year among established fiction writers. Cormac McCarthy abandoned his cowboy roots for a serial killer (NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN), Amy Tan ran to Myanmar for her "ghost-written" SAVING FISH FROM DROWNING, Kazuo Ishiguro dabbled at the edges of science fiction (NEVER LET ME GO), and even the great Garcia Marquez left the realms of magical realism to write his own Lolita tale in MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES. Early 2006 brings THE BROOKLYN FOLLIES, Paul Auster's departure from his usual haunts.

Nathan Glass (no apparent relation to the Salinger Glasses), divorced, alone, and having battled his cancer into remission, chooses Brooklyn over Florida as the place he will live out his remaining years. "I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn,..." Nathan reports in one of the more memorable opening lines of recent years. As it turns out, Brooklyn is anything but quiet for him, and rather than dying, he finds his own fountain of youth there.

Nathan retires to Brooklyn expecting to do little more than scribble out amusing anecdotes for his never-to-be-published Book of Human Folly, but events conspire quickly against his plans. First, he stumbles upon his cousin Tom, a former Ph.D. candidate now working in the neighborhood used and rare bookstore of Harry Brightman. Tom's own niece, nine-year-old Lucy, appears next, parentless, intentionally mute, and hailing from what she refers to as Carolina, Carolina. A trip to Vermont ensues in an effort to deliver Lucy to Tom's reluctant stepsister, Pamela, but that plan is interrupted by a sudden death back in Brooklyn. Finally, and with the help of an insurance investigator, Nathan searches out Lucy's mother, the wayward Aurora who has married an increasingly radicalized evangelical Christian. Along the way, Harry Brightman is revealed to have once been Harry Dunkel (Dunkel means "dark," Auster tells us), a man with a shady past in forged paintings and new shady plans to make a financial killing in forged manuscripts, Tom meets the Beautiful Perfect Mother (B.P.M.), Nathan meets the mother of the Beautiful Perfect Mother, Nathan's daughter Rachel returns to his family fold, Nathan formulates a new utopian life plan with the unlikely-named Stanley Chowder, and Tom finds wedded bliss in an unlikely place.

Nathan's own "Brooklyn Follies" far outpace his "Book of Human Folly" as Auster plays games of chance and circumstance with his characters. Everyone's best laid plans are diverted by random coincidences and the unintended consequences of their own decisions, exemplified to an unnecessary extreme when Nathan learns that his car's mechanical failure in Vermont may actually have saved his, Tom's and Lucy's lives because the brakes were about to fail. Yet at the same time Auster is playing dice with his characters, he is delivering his own riffs on city life, family relationships, divorce, literature, Christian fundamentalism, Bush II's first non-election, Republican Party policies, homosexuality and AIDS.

THE BROOKLYN FOLLIES represents a departure from the usual Auster work, presenting a sort of Brooklyn picaresque that reads more like something from Richard Brautigan or T.Coraghessan Boyle. Readers expecting another CITY OF GLASS or MOON PALACE will be disappointed, but those who read FOLLIES for the pure pleasure of reading Paul Auster will surely be rewarded by an entertaining story with offbeat but charmingly memorable characters.

Nathan Glass, the narrator of the novel, is a retired insurance agent, recently divorced, and recently treated for cancer. As the book begins, Nathan has decided to move to Brooklyn, where his childhood roots lie, and while waiting for death or life, write a book of human follies. At this point in his life he really has no purpose and no meaningful connections, but that soon changes.

One by one, long lost family and new-found friends, interesting characters every one, filter into his life and lead him into a never ending round of emotional adventures. In a sense he begins to live, perhaps for the first time, and he begins to sense the possibility of real happiness. There isn't much more to say about the plot. Colorful characters commit enormous follies, have improbable adventures, and mostly come through smelling like roses. You'll have to read the book to fill in the details.

Author Paul Auster is a brilliant writer, and master of the book-within-book and story-within-story technique. This book, unfortunately, is simply not his best work. There are too many characters, too many complicated family relationships, too much long-winded dialogue, and--worst of all--to much author-intrusion into the story. Too much "I'll tell you about that a little later." And, too much of Auster's political views injected into what is supposed to be light-hearted fiction. It took me a while to get through "Follies." I'm glad I did, and I can recommend it, but it's not up to the author's usual standard. Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

Paul Auster can be many things. He can be detached, whimsical, mysterious, wry, playful, serious, and even surrealistic. In "The Brooklyn Follies," Auster shows he can be compassionate and warm as well.

The narrator of "The Brooklyn Follies" is Nathan Glass, a divoced, cynical, 59-year-old survivor of a crumbling life who has moved back to his childhood neighborhood in Brooklyn to spend his remaining days quietly waiting for his death. But the book isn't about Glass -- it's about the people he spends his days with. Some are people he's met since moving back, and others are relatives he's known for decades. In some way, each character in the book has a life as flawed and broken-down as his.

If that sounds depressing, understand that this is not a cynical or depressing book at all. As a matter of fact, it's just the opposite, because Auster digs beneath the disappointment and pain that his characters have suffered through, and shows them not as wretched troubled souls, but as human beings capable of finding happiness and fulfillment despite themselves.

I've probably read just about every novel Paul Auster has ever written, and I liked most of them a lot, but I don't think I was affected by any of them as much as I was by "The Brooklyn Follies."

The narrator of this book is Nathan, or Uncle Nat, depending upon who you are and how old you are.

Nathan comes to Brooklyn to die after a bout with cancer. His wife and daughter are estranged, his nephew, to whom he had been close, has drifted away and his niece ran off years ago and did not even attend his sister's funeral.

With that dreary opening setting, this book is uplifting.

Having come to Brookly to die, Nathan runs into his genius nephew who has dropped out of a doctorate program to work in a used bookstore after a term as a NY cabbie. From there, Nathan's life begins to have purpose and focus. He encounters a group of fine, interesting characters, enters their lives and, in turn, his life is opened and renewed.

There are reunions, new friends, deaths, estranged relatives, saved relatives, dreams, dreams shattered - everything one would find in a life - in this book. With Nathan, the reader gets insinuated into the lives of Auster's terrific characters. One appreciates Nathan as a huge-hearted guy - the uncle everyone wants.

Nathan's open-mindedness and open heart should be a lesson to us all. But this is a character driven book, and Auster's characters are unique and finely drawn. His insights into their relationships are equally fine. There is no cardboard character nor any paper-thin relationship in this book. Even better, every character, no matter how unique, is believeable.

Despite realistic events such as death and estrangement, this book is a glass half full view of life. Nathan's world just gets better and better as he invests himself in relationships with family and new friends. Although Nathan the narrator says this book is about his nephew, it is really about his triumphant return to a full life after a despondent return to Brooklyn to die. Not only does he not die, but he finds life as he probably had never known it before.

Auster's writing and character portrayals are both superb. This book is highly recommended.

These lyrics by Kansas, "We are all just dust in the wind...," comes to mind as the theme of Auster's new book, THE BROOKLYN FOLLIES. Who will remember us when we die? is the question Auster's main character seems to ponder late in this novel, as he lies in a hospital bed, recovering from a cardiac scare. His answer: nobody (unless, of course, were an architect or a famous person). So, Nathan, the 60-year-old main character, who moved to Brooklyn "to die" (as he said), decides to open a business dedicated to writing biographies of 'normal everyday people'. This way, they'll be remembered by family and friends forever.

The bulk of the pages find Auster developing a tableau of ordinary lives into a story of wit, compassion, and uncommon interest. The novel itself is narrated by the main character, Nathan, in the way, I imagine, he would write one of his imagined biographies. So, although the novel is ostensibly about the lives and stories of his newfound neighbors, family, and friends, it's really about how Nathan envisions lives should be remembered. At least this is one existential literary interpretation of the book.

On the other hand, the book can be enjoyed as a basic, well-written story of interesting characters and interesting lives, all bundled together. Like real lives, the story never reaches an "end." It just fades away...

Some critics have complained that this book doesn't have much of a plot. But does you life have a plot? Does any life have a plot? By writing this book, Auster has taken a stab at answering these rhetorical questions.

I loved The Brooklyn Follies. I loved it on a lot of levels.

I didn't object that Auster traded in some of the more literary tone of his other works for the formerly corporate persona of Nathan. There is something really nice about the way the plot is set up for the characters. When Nathan tells us that he came to Brooklyn to die, we know that he is going to turn around and find a way to live. You take all the accidental meetings, little coincidences, improbable stories and put them together and the effect is charming. Really charming.

Because it is Auster, of course, you know that it isn't *that* charming. All the redemption and the little personal triumphs pale against the greater disaster to follow. No better way to make the inhuman clear for what it is then to contrast it with what passes for comedy.

What I particularly like is that I don't get the sense that Auster priveleges one aspect of the book over the other. The human stories become richer when seen in the light of the future, but don't really seem unimportant. And if there was a message for me to take out of the book, it would have been something like that: the details of living are important, even when set against things very far out of our control.

But Auster says that message much better than I ever could. So don't read this review. Go read the book. Recommended for fans of smart fiction, already fans of Auster or not.

. . . this is his way of getting out of a book deal! Anybody expecting a work on the par of New York Trilogy, Book of Illusions, or Oracle Night will begin by being disappointed. This disappointment will soon give way to boredom as the pages turn and if you stick around till the end your boredom will be capstoned with anger for having been patronized so much as a reader. Seriously, stick around to the last page and you'll see what I mean! Auster's Brooklyn (in this piece) could literally be anywhere, the characters could have been written by anyone, and the plotline is about as taught as overcooked spaghetti. In fact, if you only knew about Brooklyn from reading this book, you'd imagine it's the type of place where everyone at every age, income, and experience level has the exact same manner of speech and can read one another's minds so as to eliminate the need for any backgrounding or plot development. This is my first Amazon review and I wouldn't have written if I didn't think I was doing some unsuspecting Austerite a service. Do yourself a favor, ignore this one, its pretty cover, enticing jacket summary and all, and pretend it never happened. You'll have a far easier time liking Paul Auster knowing he never bothered to write a work so pedestrian it belongs in the "Independant Reader" section of the bookstore.