The Brooklyn Follies: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Paul Auster (Author) "I was looking for a quiet place to die..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, Harry Brightman, Reverend Bob (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Nathan Glass, a retired life insurance salesman estranged from his family and facing an iffy cancer prognosis, is "looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn." What he finds, though, in this ebullient novel by Brooklyn bard Auster (Oracle Night), is a vital, big-hearted borough brimming with great characters. These include Nathan's nephew, Tom, a grad student turned spiritually questing cab driver; Tom's serenely silent nine-year-old niece, who shows up on Tom's doorstep without her unstable mom; and a flamboyant book dealer hatching a scheme to sell a fraudulent manuscript of The Scarlet Letter. As Nathan recovers his soul through immersion in their lives, Auster meditates on the theme of sanctuary in American literature, from Hawthorne to Poe to Thoreau, infusing the novel's picaresque with touches of romanticism, Southern gothic and utopian yearning. But the book's presiding spirit is Brooklyn's first bard, Walt Whitman, as Auster embraces the borough's multitudes—neighborhood characters, drag queens, intellectuals manqué, greasy-spoon waitresses, urbane bourgeoisie—while singing odes to moonrise over the Brooklyn Bridge. Auster's graceful, offhand storytelling carries readers along, with enough shadow to keep the tale this side of schmaltz. The result is an affectionate portrait of the city as the ultimate refuge of the human spirit. (Jan.)
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From The New Yorker
After a "sad and ridiculous life" in the suburbs, Nathan Glass retires, gets divorced, and moves to Brooklyn to die. To pass the time, he decides to write an account of mishaps and mistakes, beginning with his own—"The Book of Human Folly." "The tone would be light and farcical throughout," he says, "and my only purpose was to keep myself entertained." Auster seems to have had a similar intent. A chance encounter with a long-lost nephew leads Nathan into an unlikely second act, involving a longer-lost niece, her runaway daughter, and a host of lively Brooklyn caricatures—a gay used-bookstore owner, a tough widow, an H.I.V.-positive drag queen—all in the midst of unlikely second acts themselves. Nathan narrates increasingly absurd events with persistent cheer, a tone mirrored by the blinkered optimism and liberal conviction of pre-9/11 Park Slope; it's a combination that soon seems less hopeful than hollow, and profoundly disengaged.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.; 1st edition (December 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805077146
• ISBN-13: 978-0805077148
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (89 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #376,899 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Mundane becomes the Miraculous, December 28, 2005

By	C. Middleton (Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

40 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All Lives In Some Ways Are Folly, December 31, 2005

By	Jon Linden (Warren, N.J. United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thoroughly Enjoyable, If Not Classic, Auster, January 4, 2006

By	Steve Koss (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.