Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #17193 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-04
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Jonathan Lethem
'An elegant and enthralling new summit in Paul Auster's art.'

Financial Times
`A stunning feat of imagination and likely the best book that Auster has written.'

Time Out
'The Book of Illusions is a masterpiece of storytelling.'

Customer Reviews

A Day in the Life
A man loses all he has got: his beloved wife and two sons in an air crash accident.
The loss is unbearable, overwhelming to David Zimmer, a Literature teacher whose life starts to fall into a big black hole, going down day after day, in a meaningless existence that is leading him to self-destruction. Only until something as pathetic as extraordinary happens, that will bring again something he also has lost: the ability to laugh.
By meeting the work of Hector Mann, a silent movie comic star of the late 20's the life of David Zimmer will know a new direction; his interest on the work and life of this actor goes so far that he ends up publishing a complete biography.
The deep research for the book is the starting point for us to discover not only who this glamorous Hollywood actor was and the work he left, but mainly to know all the strange and tragic personal events behind his life (unknown to the world) that would change and determinate forever the improbable identity of this man.
Once more in a Paul Auster's novel, not necessary the Story of the book is the most interesting, as it is the story inside the Story, in this case the story of Hector Mann. Extraordinary the universe created around this fictional character, is in fact the greatness of this book.
Hector Mann and David Zimmer are two sides of the same coin, projected in the present life of a man that tries to understand, forgive and accept the tragic events that lead him to a dead end. For that, maybe something precious, logic and real still can be found inside him; the capacity of love and to be loved, that somehow will allow Zimmer to forgive himself and accept all the unpredictable gray color zones that shape our lives.

Nearly as good as his best
Like many people, I was very impressed by Auster's early novels, 'The New York Trilogy' and 'Moon Palace' in particular. I found them strange and haunting. I'd say from 'The Music Of Chance' onwards his work for me became rather predictable and I gave up on him as something of a spent force. Now I'm not entirely sure what to think. I read this after I read 'Oracle Night', although 'The Book Of Illusions' was written before 'Oracle Night'(a much less satisfactory novel). For me, 'The Book Of Illusions' was almost as good as his early work, especially if you like novels which are stories within stories with stories. Unlike other reviewers, I found I could not put it down and just had to find out what happened, and even if the ending is somewhat unsatisfactory, it's still a good read.

A relief to get to the end!
Overall, I found this book to be amateurish, unrealistic and carelessly written.
The plot lurches through one unconvincing, overly-contrived sub-story to another, with little cohesion, and with people, events and ideas being introduced and abandoned arbitrarily throughout.
For me, the most poorly covered area of the story is the loss of David’s family (wife and 2 boys) in a plane crash. Initially, we are shown how David’s life has been totally destroyed by this event. It is, therefore, bizarre when 18 months or so later, while still in his deep pit of almost suicidal despair, he unexpectedly starts a relationship with Alma but with almost no further mention of his wife/family. Surely, his mind would be in a confused and overwhelming turmoil at the thought of his disloyalty to his late wife, at this point? Apparently not. The whole subject of his lost family (and what we initially believe is a mainstay of the book) is dropped like a hot brick and they are barely given another thought until the very end when they receive only a cursory mention. Hardly realistic.
As for the rest of the story, it seemed that the author had simply compiled a list of compelling events (involving mostly murder and sex) and quickly and clumsily patched them together around the bones of the basic plot. The author took time to describe things that were totally irrelevant while completely omitting to cover what was necessary for a cogent and convincing tale.
I didn’t care a jot for any of the characters, such was the poor characterization (hence, the loss of the films and deaths of several characters at the end made no impression on me at all). By halfway through the book I was fed up and, by the end, I was reading hell for leather simply for the relief of putting it down and starting something better.
I think the storyline had much potential (hence, why some people found it enjoyable) but Auster’s inability to develop the main characters, keep the sub-plots relevant, carry the main themes through the whole book and write flowingly reduced it to a very disappointing and clumsy story indeed. In addition, the punctuation was poor and the omission of speech marks very annoying.