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There are some books which I find seem unpromising but quickly catch you up and sweep you along and this is one of them. An old man, August Brill, newly widowed and bed-ridden owing to a car accident lies unable to sleep as does his daughter, a writer discarded by her husband; and his granddaughter, newly bereaved after the violent death of her ex-boyfriend. In order to pass the bleak, black time of the depths of night he tells himself stories. Stories in which he desperately tries to close his mind off to the encroaching reality of the sadnesses and heartbreaks which echo and re-echo around the house.

The initial long-running story he imagined of a young children's entertainer transported into a parallel universe and given the job of killing the man responsible for creating the story in which there is no twin towers attack and no war with Iraq but instead a full scale civil war between the United States, is bizarre and clever and shocking all at the same time. It reminded me of 'Slaughterhouse 5' in its surreal flight of fancy but here the traveller, unlike Billy Pilgrim, leaps not from world to world but is imprisoned in someone else's imagination. Brill is himself the imaginer of the story and therefore he is imagining the plot of his own assassination. He is desperate to avoid encountering the effects of the War in Iraq for reasons that unfold so he imagines it never happened, he is desperate to avoid the pain of his loneliness and the loneliness of those he loves so he imagines his own death and escape from that pain even only if through a story.

Gradually through a long night's conversation with his granddaughter, they both begin to come to terms with the pain and responsibilty in-built into life and its decisions. It is an incredibly moving reflection on love and the implications inherent in the fact that once love has been acknowledged and 'owned' it becomes unstoppable and immeasurable in the sense that it is bestowed unguardedly not counted out in the fashion of misers. It speaks of missed opportunities and squandered chances and the wonder of new life fighting its way through any amount of crap to spear the frozen surface of an icy heart.

The power of imagination is celebrated for good or ill. Katya, the young mourner, watches film after film after film and analyses and rejoices in their ingenuity; she celebrates the ability of the inanimate object to speak long and loud about the emotions of the filmaker and it is only towards the end of the long conversation she has with her grandad that we are confronted as with a brick wall the reaon for this seeming obsession.(view spoiler)[One viewing and recognition of genius can eradicate the horror of her boyfriend's filmed execution (hide spoiler)]. August uses his imagination to escape reality but in the end all comes full circle and he sees that reality needs to be faced, truths need to be told and genuine responsibilty needs to be accepted. In this way, and only in this way, " can the weird world roll on".

Re-reading I realize that as is so often the case I have not done the book justice but thats why i am a part time reviewer and Auster the writer he is. Nevertheless this is a really beautiful book, very powerful and well worth the time and effort. I leave the last word to Auster.

"Books force you to give something back to them, to exercise your intelligence and imagination"