Sunset Park

February 7, 2011
Auster's dry, gravelly voice has a gravitas all its own. He reads his novel about Miles Heller, hiding out from the authorities in the titular Brooklyn neighborhood, interspersed with discursions on film and baseball, fate and chance. While Auster should intuitively knows the rhythms of his own work, his reading can be oddly choppy; he occasionally comes down too hard on the wrong word. Still his voice is enough to convey a sense of the writer. One almost feels that Auster is himself an Auster character, blowing smoke rings in an empty room while pondering America's mysteries and minutiae. A Holt hardcover.

Starred review from May 1, 2010
With a plot that encompasses war in the Middle East, economic recession and the perils of the publishing industry, a contemporary vitality distinguishes the latest from the veteran author.

In many respects this novel bears the thematic imprint of Auster (Invisible, 2009, etc.)—chance, coincidence and"the imponderables of fate, the strangeness of life, the what-ifs and might-have-beens." Yet the literary gamesmanship of his metafictional narratives is less evident here, as the critical challenges of these times leave both the characters and the author with more at stake. The plot pivots around Miles Heller, son of an independent publisher and a well-known actress who divorced early in his childhood. After his stepbrother suffers a fatal accident, Miles can't shake the guilt he feels over his possible complicity and the suspicions of his stepmother, so he abandons his studies, cutting all ties with his family. A chance romance with a much younger girl returns him to New York, where he finds shelter in an abandoned building that has become something of an artist's colony. The plot unfolds from various perspectives, amid insecurities both economic and psychological, as details from the mid-1940s film The Best Years of Our Life provide cinematic counterpoint. Though one character muses that"the dark time will soon be over, and all will be forgiven," the novel's tragic foreshadowing doesn't promise a happily-ever-after ending.

Sure to please Auster fans and likely to attract new readers as well.

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Starred review from July 1, 2010
Miles Heller is an anomaly, a 28-year-old college dropout who has pared his life down to bare essentials, eschewing the ostentatious trappings of his generation and splurging only on books. Miles earns a living "trashing out" repossessed homes in south Florida, snapping disturbing photos of the detritus left behind by the newly homeless. When he falls for Pilar Sanchez, a precocious 17-year-old, Miles realizes that his day-to-day existence of few desires or needs is over. Anxious for Pilar to be of legal age to marry, he returns home to New York hoping to repair the seven-year rift with his family caused by the burden of guilt he has carried since an accident that killed his stepbrother. Miles begins to reinvent himself, squatting in an abandoned house in Brooklyn with a crew of intriguing characters: Alice, a doctoral candidate whose work at PEN frustrates her; Ellen, a lonely artist; and Bing, a brooding presence whose mood swings presage the incident that may ruin their future plans. VERDICTThe author deftly balances minute details that evoke New York City, post-financial meltdown, with marvelously drawn characters bruised but unbowed by life's vicissitudes; think Richard Russo or Anne Tyler. Auster has an impressive array of literary nominations to his credit (e.g., PEN/Faulkner, IMPAC Dublin, and Edgar), but this should be the novel that brings him a broader readership. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ"6/1/10.]—Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Ft. Myers, FL

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 15, 2010
Passionately literary, Auster nonetheless publishes as frequently as a genre author, writing poetic and brainy feigned procedurals featuring inadvertent outlaws. In his sixteenth novel, four flat-broke twentysomething searchers end up squatting in a funky abandoned house in Sunset Park, a rough Brooklyn neighborhood. Bing, the sloppy bear ringleader, plays drums and runs the Hospital for Broken Things, where he mends relics from a thriftier past. Melancholy artist Ellen is beset by erotic visions. Grad student Alice is researching pop-culture depictions of postwar sexual relationships. Miles is a fugitive. Poisoned by guilt over his stepbrothers death, he hasnt communicated with his loving father, a heroic independent publisher; his kind English professor stepmother; or his flamboyant actor mother for seven years. Lately hes been in Florida, trashing out foreclosed homes, stunned by what evicted people leave behind in anger and despair. Miles returns to New York after things turn dicey over his love affair with a wise-beyond-her-years Cuban American teenager. As always with the entrancing and ambushing Auster, every element is saturated with implication as each wounded, questing characters story illuminates our tragic flaws and profound need for connection, coherence, and beauty. In a time of daunting crises and change, Auster reminds us of lasting things, of love, art, and the miraculous strangeness of being alive.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)