Buy this book

Dean Nicholas
posted 17 January 2006

'I was looking for a quiet place to die', says Nathan Steel at the beginning of Paul Auster's tenth novel. 'Someone recommended Brooklyn'.

Auster has long had the ability to construct an engrossing tale from the most meagre premise, and The Brooklyn Follies opens in good form. The initial chapters almost directly echo his 2003 novel Oracle Night. A middle-aged man recovering from a near fatal illness? Check. A Brooklyn setting? Check (unsurprisingly). And the scholarly theme so often found in Auster's work is also present and correct. With death nowhere near as imminent as he supposed, Nathan decides to while away the days by embarking on a literary project: 'The Book Of Human Folly'. Nathan describes it in stark terms: '…an account of every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible… the follies of my fellow human beings down the ages'

The Borges-lite title of this book-within-a-book is, in fact, a sly definition of the overlapping stories that The Brooklyn Follies unveils. Auster presents a cast of variously flawed and sullied characters, who develop throughout the narrative and are finally redeemed at the novel's close. The story kicks into gear when Nathan discovers his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, working at a local bookstore. Once an excellent student with a keen interest in Melville, Tom has grown into a bitter, corpulent adult, broken by a dispiriting time at college and the sensation that his life is heading to no place in particular. Finding succour in their respective situations, Tom and Nathan's lives gradually become intertwined, until the sudden re-emergence of Tom's niece, Lucy, sets in motion a series of events that ultimately drive the characters to overcome their mutual solipsism.

As the novel progresses, Auster's love for Brooklyn is amply demonstrated. Aside from the protagonists, the village is populated with vividly drawn characters: the enigmatic Harry Brightman, owner of the bookshop; the 'BPM', or 'Beautiful Perfect Mother', an object of obsession for Tom; Honey Chowder, a tough-talking schoolteacher. Meanwhile, characters with evocative names such as Leo Metropolis and David Minor appear, however briefly, to breathe life into the mean Brooklyn streets. For a novelist who has been criticised in the past for his sketch-like characterisations, which are often mere ciphers for esoteric ideas and concepts, Auster manages to draw up a cast both plausible and interesting.

Unfortunately, Auster's sentimental desire for the wellbeing of his creations leads to his undoing. Plot strands are tied into neat and unsatisfactory conclusions. Previously insurmountable personal problems are solved. Characters are coupled off, in a way more appropriate for a sitcom finale than a serious novel. Worse, the author at times attempts to marry the somewhat threadbare narrative with an ill-fitting political sensibility. The male protagonists trash-talk Bush incessantly. More egregiously, towards the end Auster offers a ridiculous parable for modern America in the form of an implausible, and naively imagined, fundamentalist Christian sect. Auster seems to have fallen for the recent trend amongst novelists (see also: McEwan, Ian) of assuming that their political sensibilities are of particular interest to the public at large. Shoehorned into this slim book, they soon become overbearing.

Most irritating, though, is the novel's close, which takes place at '8.00am on the 11th September 2001' - forty-seven minutes before the first plane hits the World Trade Center. At this point, the artificial warmth of the novel's denouement becomes clear: the sickly feeling of coupled-up happiness will prove to be all-too illusory. But it feels like a cheap trick, a sappy vitamin pill slipped in with a meal of gruel and water, and one below a novelist of Auster's undoubted skill.

Despite all this, The Brooklyn Follies again demonstrates Auster's ability to spin prose that is eminently readable, even if it does at times lack direction. Auster has long held an obsession with the vagaries of chance and coincidence - what Shakespeare described as 'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune' - and even when discussing an arcane moment, the words are rolled into energising and addictive prose:

'If we hadn't made the decision to get off the highway at Brattleboro and follow our noses to Route 30, many of the events in this book never would have taken place. … At the time, he had no inkling of the consequences, no knowledge of the whirlwind he had set in motion. Like Kafka's doll, he thought he was simply looking for a change of scenery, but because he left one road and took another, Fortune unexpectedly reached out her arms to him and carried our boy into a different world'

True to form, the enjoyable writing style almost conquers the plot's deficiencies. Almost. But ultimately, The Brooklyn Follies opens promisingly before losing its way in a tide of nostalgic love and unconvincing cliché. Auster may dream of one day writing the definitive Brooklyn novel, but this isn't even close.