Product Description

Meet Mr Bones, the canine sidekick and confidant of Willy G. Christmas, the brilliant, troubled and altogether original poet-saint from Brooklyn. Like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza before them, they sally forth on a last great adventure...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #85048 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
"What was a poor dog to do?": This story of contemporary America--from the poet- wanderer's life on the streets to the world of "two-car garages, home-improvement loans, and neo-Renaissance shopping malls"--is told from the point of view of a "four-leg", Mr. Bones.

Following his critically acclaimed The New York Trilogy and The Invention of Solitude, Paul Auster's new novel is a sad and witty saga of a dog's life. With the imminent demise of his first master, Willy G. Christmas--on his way to "Timbuktu"--Mr Bones faces an uncertain future as a "lost" dog, an ownerless dog, a homeless dog.

Timbuktu is a tale of what happens, before and after Willy's death: the dilemmas of ethics and affection, of a man and a dog in search of love and friendship. In Mr Bones' dreams, Willy comes back, exhorting, advising, allegorising: "People get treated like dogs, too, my friend, and sometimes they have to sleep in barns and meadows because there's nowhere else for them to go." Like Mom-san, Willy's mother, "hunted ... down like a dog" in Warsaw. The connection is crucial to the novel; its sustained, but discreet, reflection on the vicissitudes of human--and canine--love and hate. --Vicky Lebeau

Review
New Yorker Auster has always written about sharp reversals of fortune, and the subject of this novel - a mongrel dog named Mr Bones, whose master is nearing death - offers wonderful scope to explore the theme. Auster's triumph is that we never doubt for a moment that the dog can reason like an intelligent child and understand human speech. This broadly comic tale offers glimpses of a profound and humane wisdom glinting beneath its assured surface. (Kirkus UK)

In a bold if not entirely successful move, Goschke adapts Auster's adult novel Timbuktu (1999) into a picture book/graphic novel for teens. The combination of the illustrations, most of which are set off in variously sized rectangular panels, and the accompanying text - a very abridged version of Auster's novel strewn about the pages without regard to the boundaries of the panels - makes for a startling collage. In non-linear fashion, readers get fragments of a canine life story, including Mr. Bones's life with his homeless master, Willy; his experiences after Willy's death; his brief, unhappy time as a suburban family dog and his likely suicide by running through traffic. Goschke's dark and gritty blue-and-gray-toned illustrations are integral to the plot of the story as well as to its melancholy atmosphere. Although likely to confuse even today's internet-savvy readers accustomed to getting their information in almost random snatches, persistent readers will be rewarded with much to think about, including the nature of narrative, memory, happiness and self-fulfillment. (Picture book. 12 & up) (Kirkus Reviews)

Synopsis
Meet Mr Bones, the canine sidekick and confidant of Willy G. Christmas, the brilliant, troubled and altogether original poet-saint from Brooklyn. Like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza before them, they sally forth on a last great adventure...

Customer Reviews

Get the kleenex out
I do not agree with the other review. I loved this novel found it incredibly sad and touching and very readable. I enjoyed as much as many of the other Auster novels i have read. Definately worth a read

A Dog's Tale
Fair story. Easy to read, and it begins and ends well. In the middle it sags a bit, and this is quite different from other Auster offerings. I felt that something was missing as I read the story, and his early books (Book of Illusions, Mr Vertigo, Moon Palace) set the standard that he hasn't quite matched in recent times.