Paul Auster, INVISIBLE

First of all big thanks to Amanda and her family for hosting our meeting in their apartment and for sharing their wonderful terrace. Since there were just four of us this time we had loads of space to enjoy the almost warm early summer evening on top of Paris' roofs.
And we had a first: Robin joined us later during the meeting by conference call. With a little training we might be able to have even video call-in's with people which are far away for the moment but want to participate nevertheless... ? (... Phoebe, Kathleen, Anjuli, ... what do you think?) That way we would get from invisible to visible...

But let's talk about Paul Auster's INVISIBLE: Appreciations of the book varied. There was positive feedback from Cynthia and deception on the side of our most fervent Auster admirer Amanda, who said to be not as satisfied as usual by this novel. For the rest of us... so so... Helen and Maren had difficulties to get into the book. Helen spent even three weeks for getting through it, which is unusual for her as she is mostly reading three books at a time. 
Everybody agreed upon Auster's excellent, as Amanda put it: genious, "technical" skills for the use of words and storytelling. But what could be understood by one as a specific force of Auster's brilliant writing, the changing and shifting perspectives, were for other readers rather disturbing and mentioned as a finger excercise of the author, a sort of show-off.
Although the book provides several references on invisibility, we could not find a real explanation for the book title. Also the question what the book was about, did not get a final answer. Which story was told: Rudolf Born's life or the one of Adam Walker, the impact of a death of a child on the life of the other children in the family, invisible events in people's life and their traces in history? And what to think about the fourth chapter, Cécile's visit to Rudolf Born? Cynthia, who was otherwise very fond of the book, called it pointless.

We turned our discussion also to other topics as for example to the books everybody has sitting at home on its shelves. So the idea was born to bring to our meetings books we would like to propose for exchange amongst our book club members. Please feel invited to bring to our meetings books you would like to exchange!

Maren & Amanda

Why Paul Auster ?

For INVISIBLE, by Paul Auster

I promised that I would write something to explain why I like Paul Auster.   It is far more difficult to explain than I originally imagined.  Ordinarily what I like in a novel is not so much an interesting plot, but interesting characters, interesting observations about the world, human nature, etc.   I also tend toward books that many people can often find depressing (Orhan Pamuk, for example).    Auster is a bit of all of the above, but also he manages to have really interesting plots as well.   The twists and turns of the plot seem a bit unrealistic, but then ultimately I somehow find that I can really identify with the thoughts and actions and ideas of most of the characters.  

I read far too many reviews online for this book and readers either loved or hated it.  This includes the professional reviewers as well as the "regular people" who post reviews on the internet.  No one seems to lack a strong opinion of either the novel or of Paul Auster as a writer in general, and the opinions seem quite evenly divided.  This in itself seems like the right formula for a good book discussion, and therefore was the reason for my selection.  I'm reluctant to write a lot about the book before the meeting, so we'll save a bit more for the minutes.

PS   I suspect that his being originally from Newark, NJ, where I lived, pushed me in the direction of his novels in the first place.  But that was just by chance.