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I’m not sure I can concisely describe what I just read. But it was good writing and the way the book was structured��4 parts with 3 people separately responsible for the narration—maintained by attention throughout. I looked at my records and the only book I read by Paul Auster was a memoir of his, The Invention of Solitude. I read it way back in 1998 so I am sure if I read it again it will be like I never read it. I guess that is a blessing rather than a curse—not remembering books read after a certain amount of time has elapsed. Although I worry…I read Jamaica Inn twice within one year, the second time not aware of reading it before although I guessed the ending (no duh Jim, you just read it five months ago!!!). 😐 Now how did I get off on that tangent?

Anyhoo, any recommendations on what I read next by Paul Auster will be welcome. 🙃

I can’t tell who was spinning a false narrative in this novel, so I will be anxious to read reviews. (thirty minutes later: After reading some reviews, I still don’t know.)

Book starts out in 1967 in New York City (Vietnam War era). Adam Walker, a graduate student, remembers (view spoiler)[ Rudolph Born killing a black teenager who tried to rob Born and himself. He also tells us later on in the book he had an incestuous relationship with his sister, Gwyn. Was that a fantasy or did he make it up? (hide spoiler)] He didn’t seem like the sort to lie.

Cecile Juin, daughter of Helene, A Frenchwoman who Rudolph Born was supposed to marry (i.e., Helene), kept a diary and relates an episode in her life when she went to a Caribbean island where Born was living and (view spoiler)[ he tells her he only wanted to marry her mom to be close to her (weird) and he was a Russian mole and was responsible for her father getting in a terrible automobile accident�� (hide spoiler)] She does not believe Born. At this point near the end of the novel I don’t know who or what to believe.

The third person who had a voice in this story is Jim Freeman, the person who is Adam’s friend from way back in 1967 and is a successful author and who has been entrusted by Adam to publish the chapters of the book sent him by Adam if he thinks it is publishable.

And the book ends abruptly and I don’t know what to make of that either. I’m still clueless as to what this novel was all about, although the book liner tells us it is supposed to be about��
�� "Youthful rage, unbridled sexual hunger, ad a relentless quest for justice. With uncompromising insight, Auster takes us into the shadowy borderland between truth and memory, between authorship and identity��.��

Reviews
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�� (the reviewer, Clancy Martin, calls it the finest novel Paul Auster has ever written and at that time he had written 15)
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Note:
I read this book in about 3 hours. It was a fast read, it was easy to read, and it was a pleasant read. Although I can’t tell you about the novel…what it all meant, even in a spoiler alert, because I don’t know what it all meant, I have to say this reviewer’s assessment below is exactly the way I felt and why I am giving it 3.5 (rounded up to 4) stars:
�� As soon as you finish Paul Auster’s “Invisible�� you want to read it again. And not because, as sometimes with his novels �� as with the novels of Georges Perec, one of a handful of other real authors mentioned in the book �� you suddenly suspect, at the very end, that you haven’t properly understood a word of what has gone before. You want to reread “Invisible�� because it moves quickly, easily, somehow sinuously, and you worry that there were good parts that you read right past, insights that you missed. The prose is contemporary American writing at its best: crisp, elegant, brisk. It has the illusion of effortlessness that comes only with fierce discipline. As often happens when you are in the hands of a master, you read the next sentence almost before you are finished with the previous one. The novel could be read shallowly, because it is such a pleasure to read.