Auster In Autumn

Paul Auster's The Brooklyn Follies is getting glowing early reviews in the UK-- even though one personally finds his conceit of having the novel end on the morning of September 11, 2001 to be a bit twee.

“The Brooklyn Follies is warmer than any of Auster’s previous novels, and is touched by an unmistakable air of nostalgia,” says The Times Literary Supplement. It continues: “(it) is a novel far more passionately American than Auster’s previous ones. It is also more abundantly furnished: its milieu is a Brooklyn of croissants and strollers, rather than, say, the inscrutable nighttown of Oracle Night.”

And the New Statesman weighs in with: “…sweet and gentle might be watchwords for the entire book, which has a gloriously autumnal feel. Auster's meditation on happiness and encroaching age ripens each page into mellow fruitfulness. This superb novel about human folly turns out to be tremendously wise.”

Update: Siri Hustvedt, Auster's wife and fellow novelist, also has a new book out, one on "artists she is drawn to". You can read a profile here.