Customer Reviews

Oracle Night: A Novel

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

Sidney Orr is just recovering from a near fatal illness, and is thinking about starting back to writing. He stumbles into a little stationery shop owned by a mysterious Chinese, and purchases a unique last-of-its-kind notebook from Portugal. With just such seemingly unrelated details, author Paul Auster lures you into his alternate reality, a world of haunting questions and mysteries.

Is there anything more to life than chance? Does anything have meaning? What is the nature of time? And most importantly, can fantasy become reality? Does the writer with his fantastic creations actually bring about future events?

Author Auster, who wrote The Book of Illusions, is a master at creating what a psychiatrist would call "dissociation"--the splitting of consciousness. With apparent ease he has the reader following three stories at once--story within story within story--and slipping into something like a trance. He fixates the reader's attention with Chinese stationers and secretive spouses and leads the reader off track with rambling footnotes that go on for several pages. He is extremely skilled at this.

I can't tell you much about the plot--you will just have to read it yourself--but I can tell you that you will be--well--entranced. I highly recommend this one! Reviewed by Louis N. Gruber.

This book caught my attention quickly, and kept me puzzled and, at times, almost, spellbound. There were layers upon layers of coincidence and happenstance, and I felt that ultimately, surely, this would all come together through skillful writerly sleight-of-hand. Such was not, however, the outcome. Countless hints and feints just fade away, never explained, never resolved. The "resolution" was too quick and incomplete; almost a quickie deus-ex-machina formulation, leaving far too many issues hanging, unexplained, irritating, bothering, and making me wonder whether I hadn't wasted my time on this book.

I found it hard to categorize this novel. Oracle Night is certainly a beautifully written piece of work, but is it a thriller, a sinister account of the life of a struggling writer, a symbolic treatise on the nature of cause and effect, or a study of a relationship in transition? Maybe it is all of these or any one of them. The novel certainly works well, as a novel within a novel, and the narrative is full of mysterious portents, omens and signs. Symbolism is paramount as Sidney Orr; the main protagonist wonders the streets of Manhattan ruminating on his life, his marriage to his wife Grace, his health, and his talent as a writer.

A mysterious notebook bought at a stationery shop in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn forms the symbolic core of the novel, as Sidney, recovering from a near fatal illness purchases the book, and for the next nine days lives almost under its spell. Eerie premonitions and a series of bewildering and mystifying events surround him, as he maniacally begins a novel about the life of Nick Bowen, who has inexplicably deserted his wife Eva, and is trying to start a new life for himself in Kansas City. As the story progresses, Sidney is forced to confront certain circumstances in his own life that demand an explanation.

Is Sidney like Nick and "in search of indifference, a tranquil affirmation of things-as-they-are" or is he like Eva, "at war with those things, a victim of circumstances" his mind " a storm field of conflicting emotions: panic, and fear, sorrow, anger and despair." As the novel progresses, Nick's journey of self-discovery culminates in the revealing of secrets, and the realization that there is more to his relationship with his wife Grace and with the enigmatic author John Trause than meets the eye. Auster beautifully and cogently weaves so many different themes into the narrative: The connection between imagination and reality, the cause and effect "between the words in a poem and the events in our lives", the nature of time, and the manifestation of bad luck in its "most cruel and perverse form." The acceptance of the power of random, and purely accidental forces that mold our destinies is at the thematic heart of this novel. Oracle Night is an original and quite innovative work of fiction.

Michael

This little book gave me that rare experience of being absolutely unable to stop reading the thing! I had read, and so thoroughly enjoyed, The Music of Chance some years ago, that upon fininshing, I immediately went back to the beginning and read it again. I don't know why it's taken me so long to read another Auster, but I was certainly not disappointed. I loved M.R. Chang, Ed Victory, and Sidney Orr - even the horrible Jacob is intriguing, almost sympathetic in his way, before the awful and unexpected denouement. I didn't feel the ending was abrupt, as some reviewers have - maybe it's the kind of book that's too good to have to stop reading, or writing. Curse you, Paul Auster! Now I have to read all your other books.

"Words, words, words", says Hamlet. Paul Auster, on the other hand, says "words could kill (...) Words could alter reality, and therefore they were too dangerous to be entrusted to a man". But when "Oracle Night"'s narrator realizes so, it is too late -- he has said too many words, and his reality is a way too different.

Still working on (or insisting on, depending where you come from) the role of the writer in the society, New Yorker writer Paul Auster has delivered one of his most engaging books in his latest "Oracle Night". Not different from most of his previous work, he focuses on a New Yorker writer, in this case, the protagonist's life will be deeply altered in the course of a week or so.

When we first meet Sidney Orr he is leaving hospital and barely knows how the life is outside the facility. He is a writer who hasn't worked for a long time, and seems to be longing to get back to work. What will start this process is a blue Portuguese notebook that he buys in a store that belongs to a Chinese named M.R. Chang.

From the moment Orr starts working on his blue notebook something happens -- not only to him, but to Auster's narrative as well. There is a smooth change: we start reading Orr's novel that is a retelling of a minor plot from Dashiell Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon". For some time, "Oracle Night" is a book within a book within a book. At some point, there are three distinctive narratives in one book -- and it is not difficult to follow any of them, because the three are very interesting.

This device is nothing new -- A. S. Byatt's "Possession", Ian McEwan's "Atonement" to name a few--, but in Auster's hands it is still interesting. What fascinates most when he uses such a device is fact that he is trying to expose how (un)limited is the work of a writer. Different from 'real life' a writer can leave something unfinished. If he doesn't know what to do with his narrative he may toss his work aside and start a new one. In 'real life' there is not tossing -- one must deal with the problem.

It is impressive that a novel about words and its powers is so thin. Auster is economic with his words, because like Orr, he knows that they can kill, alter reality --that, after all, they are too dangerous. It's been a long time since I last read a book that gave me so much pleasure -- that is why "Oracle Night" receives my highest praises and recommendations.

I was really into Auster after I read "The New York Trilogy". Here was a very unique voice, shifting between some sort of latent psychosexual existentialism and classic Dashiell Hammett-ish Detective fiction, creating something utterly new.

Sometimes a great writer will only have one or two great books in them (it has been argued, respectively, of JD Salinger, although I disagree, but what about Harper Lee or Ralph Ellison? Or even Nabokov?) The point is, I have never read another work from Auster that equalled the first one I found so passionately transfixing. But that was years ago.

Oracle Night seems a bit like an inside joke. I felt like I was reading scattershot notes for a novel-to-be rather than a published work, and truthfully, I felt a little insulted. Auster has been reading a lot of John Updike. The whiny protagonist, Sidney Orr, is a writer who goes through an early midlife crisis once he is released from the hospital after a mysterious illness nearly takes his life.

He becomes obsessed with a blue notebook he finds at a stationery store in Brooklyn. It's so mysterious, in fact, that the store inexplicably shutters overnight, and our hero is baffled by the closing. Wow, can you imagine? Never saw that one coming, did you? Then strange, ridiculous things start happening--his homebodied life with his pretty wife starts coming apart, his relationship with an accomplished writer is strained, and then lots of bad, edgy, violent stuff that will literally make you laugh out loud, especially that tacked-on embarrassing ending that attempts to justify it all. There are pregnancies, affairs, failed relationships, prostitution, paranoia, fight scenes, and drug addiction. Hey, maybe Auster should start writing for The OC.

The thing is, the book isn't boring. It could have gone somewhere, if Auster had just tried. Subplots, conventions, and narrative threads come and go without apology. Or REASONING! The book is badly in need of a perceptive editor, and clearly didn't get one...

Orr starts writing a novel-within-a-novel in his stupid blue book which gradually bleeds into the rest of the novel. This story gradually becomes more interesting than the main story, but once this other character locks himself in a room, which could have been a fascinating invitation for some true black humored alienated angst, which is what Auster does best, he drops the tale, letting it dangle forever afterward. HUH?

I have always said no one but Nabokov has been successful breaking up their text with the use of footnotes, but Auster tries his hand at it, which becomes painfully connfusing, and once again, somewhat embarrassing for him. He must clearly have understood that, because he drops that convention too, without so much of a sigh.

Characters come and go, their actions never explained. There is an ominous fatalistic tone to the book which builds and builds, all the while never leaving the literary level of a junior high school goth kid scribbling bad poetry about bloody roses and daggers in his mathematics textbook.

Like watching one of those Kevin Costner movies from the late 80's, you'll find yourself enjoying the disaster a bit more than the novel itself. Something tells me that's not what Auster had in mind.

Sidney Orr is a 34-year old writer in New York who is recovering from a near fatal illness. As part of his rehabilitation he roams the streets of his neighbourhood, where one day he finds the Paper Palace, a stationary shop where he buys a blue Portuguese notebook from the Chinese owner. When he gets home he immediately starts to write a story about a man who one day walks out on his wife and disappears without a trace. But after a while he gets stuck and does not know how to continue. In the meantime he finds out that his wife is pregnant, his house is broken into, he endangers his marriage when he encounters the Chinese shopowner Mr Chang again, his best friend, the renowned author John Trause, has health problems and the son of this best friend ends up in a rehab centre. And all that in the timespan of nine days. As Sidney tries to cope with all this he needs his blue notebook to make sense of all the developments.

This book gets mixed reviews on Amazon and I see the problems that some people have with the two relatively unfinished story lines. Paul Auster can definitely write: even though the story as such was not terribly interesting to me (except for the story within the story of the guy who disappears without a trace), the book is so well-written that I was simply forced to read on. 

Auster typically writes about what he knows best, being a writer and living in New York. That's what makes him so good. In this regard (Oracle Night) really wasn't that much different than some of his other novels. There really wasn't anything there--and yet there was so much there. This book changed me, but I can't say how. Sapen (in his previous review) put it much more eloquently than I ever could. Very Zen, if that's what Zen means.

At first I detested the notion of footnotes. I found them ostentatious, and considered Auster sort of a jerk for using them in this way because I don't want to think of one of my favorite writer's as being pretentious. But I love Auster's works and so I opened my mind and decided this was no different than if my sister was telling me a really good story and simply digressed, as we all so often do while story-telling, which actually made me wind up feeling really glad that Auster did this. It was actually pretty brilliant.

Stick with it and you won't be disappointed. There is something very pure and beautiful within the pages of this novel.

I've always liked Paul Auster, though I've found some of his last few works (Timbuktu, House of Illusions) somewhat less powerful than his earlier novels (Music of Chance, Moon Palace, Leviathan). But Oracle Night is fantastic, really his best work in years. Anybody who has ever liked anything they've read by Auster should read this one.

The usual themes are present: loss, chance, memory, and that ever-present Austerian curiosity, the windfall of funds; but the intricate novel-within-novel structure (including, yes, yet another novel nested inside) makes the reader feel like he's living a dream.

A masterwork. Buy this book.

Sidney Orr is a novelist living in New York. At the beginning of "Oracle Night", he is still recovering from a serious illness. The Novel is set in 1982 and the reader follows the novelist's life for nine eventful days. The plot starts when Sidney discovers a blue notebook at the Paper Palace, a stationary shop in Brooklyn. Soon Sidney falls under the spell of the empty notebook and he starts using it to write the beginning of his new novel. He at once finds himself trapped in a world of premonitions and events which threaten his marriage and undermine his faith in reality. Paul Auster skilfully mingles the realms of everyday life with the imaginary world the Sidney is trying to create in the blue notebook. A compulsive and original novel. On this audiobook, you can hear the writer reading his own novel, which is a nice complement to the novel itself.