Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64377 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-04
• Original language: English
• 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.

Page-turning literary mystery story
David Zimmer, the protagonist in Paul Auster's compelling and elegant new novel, The Book of Illusions, finds solace from the grief of losing his wife and two sons in a plane crash by immersing himself in the films of silent comedy star, Hector Mann. An academic by profession, David writes a critical study of Mann's films, but, as the book is published, he is contacted by sources who claim that Hector Mann, who hasn't been seen for almost sixty years and is presumed dead, is alive and living in New Mexico. Fuelled by the desire to resolve the puzzle of Hector's missing years, David travels to the ranch where Hector now lives and where he and his wife have spent the last six decades making mysterious films that have never been screened in public.

The unswerving compulsion to unearth, and ultimately understand, another person's identity is a theme that Auster returns to frequently in his work, in novels such as New York Trilogy and Leviathan, and yet here it is more brilliantly realised than ever. The story-within-a-story motif is ever-present but the different strands are so ingeniously interwoven that this familiar technique never seems predictable or tired. Also present is Auster's continuing fascination with the medium of film - he has written several successful screenplays for films such as Smoke and Blue in the Face - and he provides exquisitely detailed descriptions of several of Hector Mann's films.

Brimming with plot twists and turns, The Book of Illusions is a gripping, page-turning literary mystery story, but it is also a complex and genuinely moving meditation on the nature of identity and how any attempt to live vicariously through another's life will always be doomed to failure. It also questions whether art can or should ever be truly immortal and whether or not an artist relinquishes all moral rights to their work once they are gone. This is a stunning summation of Auster's literary vision that thrills on the first read, but offers more than enough depth to satisfy numerous re-readings.

Good, but not his best
I'm a firm fan of Auster's novels - Leviathan is my favorite. While I enjoyed this, his latest, and have been interested to see it described by some critics as his best - for me this was a slight disappointment.

The premise is interesting, the characters are well drawn and during some sections (notably the story of Hector Mann's disappearing act) I sped through it fast. Ultimatley, however, I didn't really feel Auster was offering me anything new here. Perhaps the scope was not large enough, perhaps the themes were a little too familiar, or maybe having read some of his other novels my expectations have become a little high. Of course (and I hate to admit it) maybe I just missed something!

Make no mistake, this is a good novel, and very well written, but compared to some of his others I found myself strangley uninvolved. I would recommend Leviathan or Moon Palace over this.