Man in the Dark by Paul Auster

Published by Henry Holt and Co. on August 19, 2008

August Brill, age 72, lives with his daughter and granddaughter. Brill is a temporary invalid, having crushed his leg in a car accident. Brill recently lost his wife; his daughter's husband left her; his granddaughter's boyfriend was recently murdered. Brill and his granddaughter spend their days watching Netflix movies (she's a film student); Brill spends his sleepless nights inventing stories. The story he invents during the course of the novel centers on a man who has been abducted from his life, transplanted to an alternative Earth where 9/11 never happened, where a civil war is claiming millions of lives. The civil war is happening because a writer (Brill) is writing about it; the abducted man is tasked with killing Brill.

As one would expect from a Paul Auster novel, Man in the Dark is elegantly written. Like most of Auster's characters, Brill is isolated, and not only (or primarily) because of his limited mobility is limited by a recent traffic accident. He has difficulty connecting with both his daughter and granddaughter; the reader suspects he had the same problem with his wife before her death. The main characters are all working their way through pain. The story Brill creates to combat his insomnia is telling: Brill seems to want to cast himself as the abducted man (relatively young, happily married) who is charged with killing the old, destructive man Brill imagines himself to have become. Ultimately he confides something of his life to his granddaughter, who is also unable to sleep, and by doing so perhaps starts coming to terms with the person he has become.

All of this is heavy stuff and yet, at the end, I was left with an "is that all there is?" feeling. I was hoping for a bit more substance to emerge from this thin novel. Still, I found it worth reading just for the enjoyment of Auster's prose: the writing is sharp and poignant. For that I can recommend it, but readers shouldn't expect the depth of Auster's best work.

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