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: #230097 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

Customer Reviews

A super read. Paul Auster Timbuktu
One of America's greatest living writers. Another superb offering from Auster. This is shorter than some of his other books. His depiction of the relationship between man and dog is heart rendering and full of compassion. Auster is just so clever with his fable-type ideas and is certainly up there with Mr Vertigo and Music of Chance. If you are looking for an intelligent read, full of creativity and sensitivity then Auster really is your man. He really does understand the complexity of story telling.

Disappointing
I am a big Auster fan. However I did not really enjoy this book. The story is told by a dog, mr Bones. Mr Bones reminisces about his master's life (an excentric guy who goes by the name of Christmas after Santa once appeared to him on TV and told him to sort his life out) and wonders about his own life once Christmas will be no longer be. It left me cold and perplex. Not sure what was the point of this one. It felt to me like Auster had this little novel lying around in a drawer, did not know what to do with it so he got it published.

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.