Baumgartner by Paul Auster
“… why some fleeting, random moments persist in memory while other, supposedly more important moments vanish forever. …flotsam from the unvanished but long vanished past” “If the story turns out to be so astounding and so powerful that your jaw drops open and you feel that it has changed or enhanced or deepened your understanding of the world, does it matter if the story is true or not?” Paul Auster’s last novel is moving, upsetting and open ended; it leaves you wondering about nothing and everything and with the feeling of having just read an obituary. It talks about life, death and fate, about getting old and above all, about how we deal with grief and how our minds think and create the narrative of our lives, present and past. Why do we remember some things and not others? How can fiction help so much with reality? Do we remember real memories, or do we create them? These and other similar questions aren’t answered in Auster’s intimate novel. You must think the answer yourself. The ...