Awful , 31 Aug 2008
To be perfectly honest, I must say I deeply regret buying this book now.

First of all, the plot unfolds in a very messy manner: too many unnecessary characters; too much drama; too many tragic (redundant) stories. As one of the previous reviews mentions, the Needler family's stories are completely unnecessary, misplaced everywhere, consequently not blending in with the rest of the plot at all. Why does Marcus have to die in the plot? What significance does it bring to the plot? I'm totally lost here.

Moreover, I can't stop feeling that the plot was put to an end in haste, leaving readers with a lot of confusion. It appears that this author put almost all the characters through so much tragedy and drama that she had to end the plot in haste, not being able to melt it all together in an elegant way. To reiterate, some of the drama and personal tragedies are completely redundant.

This book is a sheer disappointment and hence I wouldn't recommend this
book to anyone. In fact, this disappointment has become even greater because the book I'd read before was another bestselling book entitled 'no time for good bye' written by Linwood Barclay, which was brilliant incomparably to Kate Atkinson's book.

I wish I could get a refund.

A little cluttered, though I'm still a big fan, 27 Aug 2008
I love Kate Atkinson's writing (I don't usually buy books in hardback!) and did enjoy this novel, finishing it in a matter of days.

However, I can't deny that it felt a little cluttered - too many perspectives; too many personal tragedies; too much drama and bloody violence. I felt that an awful lot had been packed in along the way and it began to feel unrealistic and unsubtle.

To my mind, the Needler story was unnecessary; Reggie's personal circumstances went from bad to unlikely; and all the key characters were a little too connected. A bit of coincidence is one thing, but this went too far. Perhaps it was meant to feel 'fateful' but it didn't quite work for me.

When writing from Jackson Brodie's perspective Kate Atkinson seems at her most comfortable, he's a rounded character and totally believable. For me, Reggie was endearing but didn't quite ring true and I am not at all keen on her new pet character, Louise Munroe. Not that it's vital to always like characters in novels, but she's clearly being established as a heroine, perhaps equal to Jackson, but for me she has few redeeming features. I simply don't want to know much more about her.

Given Kate Atkinson's talents as a writer (her colourful prose and characterisation draw the reader in from the very start) I feel she doesn't need to rely so heavily on crime as a genre. She built up her initial tale of the Mason family in a compelling way, only to destroy them a few pages later. It felt like a waste. I remember feeling the same way about Case Histories.

I look forward to her next novel but hope she tones down the crime elements just a little and focuses on her characters and insights into their lives and loves.

Another excellent read...., 27 Aug 2008
Kate Atkinson is one of the few authors I rush to buy in hard back and yet again I was not disappointed. This book is definitely 'unputdownable' and I was quite upset I finished it so quickly. A great read. Jackson Brodie is the most interesting and charismatic fictional detective I've met in many years and I can't wait for the next one....!

A Dip at the End, 20 Aug 2008


I endorse all the previous praise. I love Atkinson's work. It is a refreshing change from the current spare 'writing course' novels. She breaks all the rules and I love it. The only criticism I have is that after gripping my attention so that I could not wait to get back to it, it suddenly lost 'thrust' and I felt the ending became rushed and rather laboured. All in all though, a very good read

It may sound strange, but: , 18 Aug 2008
I constantly found myself thinking that Kate Atkinson has evolved into an unlikely combination of the current William Gibson, and Raymond Chandler.

Anyone who knows these authors will take that as a strong recommendation indeed.

William Gibson and Kate Atkinson might not seem like an obvious comparison, but there are two similarities in its favour:
1. They both know people and culture. In some ways, Atkinson is as close to the cutting edge of what it's like to live in our times as Gibson's immediate futurism.
2. The narrative strands remind me of Gibson's masterful use of differing perspectives leading towards a unified conclusion. All of the protagonists are solid, and, unlike most multiple narrative novels, I didn't find myself sighing upon seeing that I was about to read a "boring" viewpoint. Obviously Atkinson's modern day knight - Jackson Brodie - is the highlight, but the other characters, like an outstanding relay team, support him admirably and occasionally even steal the limelight.

Talking of the modern day knight: Jackson is more middle aged, less glib, and not as slick as Chandler's Marlowe, but that makes him all the more compelling. He is a character that men and women of all ages can hope to relate to, and that is without being a saccharine paragon of virtue.

This is one of the few books I'd recommend to anyone that I know and like. It make be the third of a series, but it's connections to the previous books are not instrinsic, and I believe an Atkinson virgin (a wild Artemis, but not in a good way, perhaps!) would enjoy this as much as I did.

Buy it now!

Awful , 31 Aug 2008
To be perfectly honest, I must say I deeply regret buying this book now.

First of all, the plot unfolds in a very messy manner: too many unnecessary characters; too much drama; too many tragic (redundant) stories. As one of the previous reviews mentions, the Needler family's stories are completely unnecessary, misplaced everywhere, consequently not blending in with the rest of the plot at all. Why does Marcus have to die in the plot? What significance does it bring to the plot? I'm totally lost here.

Moreover, I can't stop feeling that the plot was put to an end in haste, leaving readers with a lot of confusion. It appears that this author put almost all the characters through so much tragedy and drama that she had to end the plot in haste, not being able to melt it all together in an elegant way. To reiterate, some of the drama and personal tragedies are completely redundant.

This book is a sheer disappointment and hence I wouldn't recommend this
book to anyone. In fact, this disappointment has become even greater because the book I'd read before was another bestselling book entitled 'no time for good bye' written by Linwood Barclay, which was brilliant incomparably to Kate Atkinson's book.

I wish I could get a refund.

A little cluttered, though I'm still a big fan, 27 Aug 2008
I love Kate Atkinson's writing (I don't usually buy books in hardback!) and did enjoy this novel, finishing it in a matter of days.

However, I can't deny that it felt a little cluttered - too many perspectives; too many personal tragedies; too much drama and bloody violence. I felt that an awful lot had been packed in along the way and it began to feel unrealistic and unsubtle.

To my mind, the Needler story was unnecessary; Reggie's personal circumstances went from bad to unlikely; and all the key characters were a little too connected. A bit of coincidence is one thing, but this went too far. Perhaps it was meant to feel 'fateful' but it didn't quite work for me.

When writing from Jackson Brodie's perspective Kate Atkinson seems at her most comfortable, he's a rounded character and totally believable. For me, Reggie was endearing but didn't quite ring true and I am not at all keen on her new pet character, Louise Munroe. Not that it's vital to always like characters in novels, but she's clearly being established as a heroine, perhaps equal to Jackson, but for me she has few redeeming features. I simply don't want to know much more about her.

Given Kate Atkinson's talents as a writer (her colourful prose and characterisation draw the reader in from the very start) I feel she doesn't need to rely so heavily on crime as a genre. She built up her initial tale of the Mason family in a compelling way, only to destroy them a few pages later. It felt like a waste. I remember feeling the same way about Case Histories.

I look forward to her next novel but hope she tones down the crime elements just a little and focuses on her characters and insights into their lives and loves.

Another excellent read...., 27 Aug 2008
Kate Atkinson is one of the few authors I rush to buy in hard back and yet again I was not disappointed. This book is definitely 'unputdownable' and I was quite upset I finished it so quickly. A great read. Jackson Brodie is the most interesting and charismatic fictional detective I've met in many years and I can't wait for the next one....!

A Dip at the End, 20 Aug 2008


I endorse all the previous praise. I love Atkinson's work. It is a refreshing change from the current spare 'writing course' novels. She breaks all the rules and I love it. The only criticism I have is that after gripping my attention so that I could not wait to get back to it, it suddenly lost 'thrust' and I felt the ending became rushed and rather laboured. All in all though, a very good read

It may sound strange, but: , 18 Aug 2008
I constantly found myself thinking that Kate Atkinson has evolved into an unlikely combination of the current William Gibson, and Raymond Chandler.

Anyone who knows these authors will take that as a strong recommendation indeed.

William Gibson and Kate Atkinson might not seem like an obvious comparison, but there are two similarities in its favour:
1. They both know people and culture. In some ways, Atkinson is as close to the cutting edge of what it's like to live in our times as Gibson's immediate futurism.
2. The narrative strands remind me of Gibson's masterful use of differing perspectives leading towards a unified conclusion. All of the protagonists are solid, and, unlike most multiple narrative novels, I didn't find myself sighing upon seeing that I was about to read a "boring" viewpoint. Obviously Atkinson's modern day knight - Jackson Brodie - is the highlight, but the other characters, like an outstanding relay team, support him admirably and occasionally even steal the limelight.

Talking of the modern day knight: Jackson is more middle aged, less glib, and not as slick as Chandler's Marlowe, but that makes him all the more compelling. He is a character that men and women of all ages can hope to relate to, and that is without being a saccharine paragon of virtue.

This is one of the few books I'd recommend to anyone that I know and like. It make be the third of a series, but it's connections to the previous books are not instrinsic, and I believe an Atkinson virgin (a wild Artemis, but not in a good way, perhaps!) would enjoy this as much as I did.

Buy it now!



Short, simple, but profoundly moving, 01 Sep 2008
Whether through its shortness of length or through the familiarity with typical Paul Auster subject matter, there seems to be a tendency in other reviews here so far to underestimate the true worth of the author's latest novel. Man in the Dark may indeed appear short and simple on the surface, but the importance of its subject matter and the emotional depth it covers is nonetheless remarkable.

Through August Brill, the man in the dark, Auster tries to make sense of the world through the medium of the writer spinning ideas in his head. Yes, that's nothing new with Auster and there's certainly a sense of post-modern reflection on the nature of writing and the duty of the writer, but as with Brooklyn Follies and his collection of True Tales Of American Life, Auster is interested in ordinary people and the impact of the exceptional or significant moments on their lives.

Those significant events affecting American people today are alluded to in the book's references to Iraq and the Twin Towers. It's not Auster's intention to confront such grand events, however significant they might seem, but to reduce them to the smaller scale in considering how people learn to deal with such experiences. That does not make Man In The Dark a lesser work. Through memories, shared experiences of joy and suffering, through the fictions they create and the movies they watch, his characters struggle to make sense of an absurd world ever more inclined to bring new unspeakable horrors. Auster masterfully brings these all together into a profoundly moving piece that is richer in meaning and worth than its apparent brevity suggests.

Typical Auster fare, but mmensely readable, 31 Aug 2008
Man in the Dark is typical Auster fare. It contains stories within stories within stories, and it plays with the concept that people can inhabit more than one world. It also explores memory, and the differences, if any, between the real and imagined.

It is told through the eyes of August Brill, a 72-year-old invalid, who dreams up stories in his head as a way of overcoming his insomnia. One of these stories is about a young man who awakens in a parallel universe in which September 11 did not happen. The America he finds himself in is not the calm, peaceful nation one would expect but a country at war with itself resulting from the secession of New York and a host of other states unhappy with the 2000 election result that put George W. Bush in power.

It's a horrifying glimpse of another world that might have been. It reads like something that Cormac McCarthy and Stephen King might have colluded on. It's dark, menacing and incredibly realistic.

But this is but one narrative thread of Man in the Dark. There is another in which the grieving August Brill recounts his marriage and long life with his now dead but much-loved Sonia to his granddaughter, Katya, who also suffers from insomnia. Katya, too, is grieving for the loss of her boyfriend, Titus, who was murdered in Iraq, and she stalls her grief by watching world movies with her grandfather all day long.

Later, the story of Titus's untimely death, is also spelled out. So what results is a novel composed of many different stories that share common themes including love, loss, loneliness, fear and war.

Man in the Dark is an immensely readable book that moves along at a fast pace, so fast that I was able to read it in one sitting. There's little clutter, but there's a lot of stuff going on, too much, probably, to absorb in one reading. Whether the diehard fans will like it as much as me remains to be seen, but I thought it was an enjoyable, affecting and thought-provoking read, one that I am sure will linger in my mind for a long time to come.

The weird world of Paul Auster rolls back into town, 27 Aug 2008
The first half of the book has an alternative universe thing going on which kept making me think of a high school kid trying to rewrite Terminator it was just so cringey; I think intentionally bad and overdramatic dialogue, plus an old man, August Brill, lying in bed inventing it all.

Yet in the second half, the story became for me much more moving, about family, forgiveness, and the redemptive power of stories. Brill and his grief-stricken granddaughter Katya watch old movies together and re-tell the plots later; the story of Brill's own complicated marriage emerges during a long dark night chat with Katya.

There are chunks of the story missing as far as I'm concerned - I wanted to know more about Miriam, Brill's daughter! - and it won't go on my list of his best books ever, but by the last few pages, I was weeping (as usual with his books) and I found it in the end incredibly moving. Don't miss it if you are a fan, but be prepared for that weird meta-science fiction slant to start with...

Dark Dreams, Dark Politics, 22 Aug 2008
Quite a few of Auster's novels have a surreal quality. Man in the Dark does too. In this case, it's an almost science fictional scenario - an alternate America where civil war has broken out and the United States has become the Disunited States.

This imagined world exists only in the mind of August Brill, an elderly man (in the real world) lying in bed recovering from an accident that has left him immobile. Brill's imaginary excursions into this parallel world are interspersed with comparatively mundane real world scenes that begin to paint a picture of his views, his life and his family. There's also an interesting recursive aspect to the alternate America scenario (which I won't elaborate on here for fear of giving away the plot) that adds a further surreal dimension to the story.

The parallel reality aspect of the story ends about two thirds of the way through the book, which is a shame because I found the whole concept quite fascinating and very entertaining. Most of the rest of the book consists of a discussion between Brill and his granddaughter Katya in which Brill recounts the story of his marriage and Katya grapples with guilt over the death in Iraq of her former boyfriend who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists.

For me, America's military involvement in Iraq is the major theme of the book. In Brill's alternate reality, the Twin Towers remain standing and America does not go to war in Iraq. Instead, it self-destructs. In the real world, American soldiers die fighting and others (like Katya's boyfriend) die simply because they're Americans in the wrong place at the wrong time. The implication seems to be that America's interventionist foreign policy is an alternative to the complete breakdown of national unity; that war somehow holds the nation together, albeit tenuously. I don't think Auster is advocating the policy, but rather asking whether it's really worth it even if the alternative is confronting some pretty unpleasant realities at home.

Man in the Dark is Auster's most political book to date, but it's not ponderous or sanctimonious. It's fundamentally a story about a man and his family. The politics kind of lurks in the background. It's a book that needs to be read more than once, I think (and it's short enough for that not to be a burden). I enjoyed it a lot. It's provocative and imaginative, as good literature should be.




More meta-fictional mediocrity from Auster, 20 Aug 2008

This novella ultimately speaks to leftist American fantasies of what might have been following the effective coup de gras of the 2000 election, and of a subsequent fantasy usurpation of the hegemony of the Bush administration (Auster was one of a coterie of writers who remarked in 2004 That if Bush got re-elected he would leave America. He did not.)

From a narrative viewpoint, August Brill re-imagines an ersatz post-2000 America in which none of the "Bush-crimes" that we know occur, and tells the story of Owen Brick, (Barack Obama???) a reluctant hero figure who goes through the exact same trajectory of countless other Auster protagonists - memory loss, identity crisis, sex with beautiful stranger, physical violence and an ignominious and ambiguous death. This plot had some promise but is jettisoned 2/3rds of the way through the book for no apparent reason other than Brill (Auster) can't be arsed finishing it. The rest of the book features Brill lying in bed waffling for hours about how his dead wife, his decapitated granddaughters boyfriend and the remorse he feels for the whole mess. The original Brick narrative is not even given a mention after.

The writing is sparse, which is fine if you're Raymond Carver but the novella features some truly cringing scenes, (notably the 73 year Brill lying in bed at 4 in the morning with his granddaughter telling her about the anal sex he had with her grandmother.) which from a narrative viewpoint are as irrelevant as they are turgid.

Paul Auster hasn't written a good novel since Oracle Night, and has not written an important novel since Moon Palace. Like DeLillo, Auster pointedly fails to address the fallout of the defining moment of his time. The waning powers of these behemoths of American literature is sometimes uncomfortable to witness.

As a person who was always both stimulated and entertained by Auster's novels I feel disappointed. It is as if he has forgotten how to tell stories, or rather he cant be bothered finishing them. If you want to original read literature that really confronts 9/11 read Safran Foer or Lydia Davis. For all the fetishization of the primacy of the Author in Man in the Dark, Auster does not deliver. The failure of his characters to tell stories is sadly matched by his own.

Awful , 31 Aug 2008
To be perfectly honest, I must say I deeply regret buying this book now.

First of all, the plot unfolds in a very messy manner: too many unnecessary characters; too much drama; too many tragic (redundant) stories. As one of the previous reviews mentions, the Needler family's stories are completely unnecessary, misplaced everywhere, consequently not blending in with the rest of the plot at all. Why does Marcus have to die in the plot? What significance does it bring to the plot? I'm totally lost here.

Moreover, I can't stop feeling that the plot was put to an end in haste, leaving readers with a lot of confusion. It appears that this author put almost all the characters through so much tragedy and drama that she had to end the plot in haste, not being able to melt it all together in an elegant way. To reiterate, some of the drama and personal tragedies are completely redundant.

This book is a sheer disappointment and hence I wouldn't recommend this
book to anyone. In fact, this disappointment has become even greater because the book I'd read before was another bestselling book entitled 'no time for good bye' written by Linwood Barclay, which was brilliant incomparably to Kate Atkinson's book.

I wish I could get a refund.

A little cluttered, though I'm still a big fan, 27 Aug 2008
I love Kate Atkinson's writing (I don't usually buy books in hardback!) and did enjoy this novel, finishing it in a matter of days.

However, I can't deny that it felt a little cluttered - too many perspectives; too many personal tragedies; too much drama and bloody violence. I felt that an awful lot had been packed in along the way and it began to feel unrealistic and unsubtle.

To my mind, the Needler story was unnecessary; Reggie's personal circumstances went from bad to unlikely; and all the key characters were a little too connected. A bit of coincidence is one thing, but this went too far. Perhaps it was meant to feel 'fateful' but it didn't quite work for me.

When writing from Jackson Brodie's perspective Kate Atkinson seems at her most comfortable, he's a rounded character and totally believable. For me, Reggie was endearing but didn't quite ring true and I am not at all keen on her new pet character, Louise Munroe. Not that it's vital to always like characters in novels, but she's clearly being established as a heroine, perhaps equal to Jackson, but for me she has few redeeming features. I simply don't want to know much more about her.

Given Kate Atkinson's talents as a writer (her colourful prose and characterisation draw the reader in from the very start) I feel she doesn't need to rely so heavily on crime as a genre. She built up her initial tale of the Mason family in a compelling way, only to destroy them a few pages later. It felt like a waste. I remember feeling the same way about Case Histories.

I look forward to her next novel but hope she tones down the crime elements just a little and focuses on her characters and insights into their lives and loves.

Another excellent read...., 27 Aug 2008
Kate Atkinson is one of the few authors I rush to buy in hard back and yet again I was not disappointed. This book is definitely 'unputdownable' and I was quite upset I finished it so quickly. A great read. Jackson Brodie is the most interesting and charismatic fictional detective I've met in many years and I can't wait for the next one....!

A Dip at the End, 20 Aug 2008


I endorse all the previous praise. I love Atkinson's work. It is a refreshing change from the current spare 'writing course' novels. She breaks all the rules and I love it. The only criticism I have is that after gripping my attention so that I could not wait to get back to it, it suddenly lost 'thrust' and I felt the ending became rushed and rather laboured. All in all though, a very good read

It may sound strange, but: , 18 Aug 2008
I constantly found myself thinking that Kate Atkinson has evolved into an unlikely combination of the current William Gibson, and Raymond Chandler.

Anyone who knows these authors will take that as a strong recommendation indeed.

William Gibson and Kate Atkinson might not seem like an obvious comparison, but there are two similarities in its favour:
1. They both know people and culture. In some ways, Atkinson is as close to the cutting edge of what it's like to live in our times as Gibson's immediate futurism.
2. The narrative strands remind me of Gibson's masterful use of differing perspectives leading towards a unified conclusion. All of the protagonists are solid, and, unlike most multiple narrative novels, I didn't find myself sighing upon seeing that I was about to read a "boring" viewpoint. Obviously Atkinson's modern day knight - Jackson Brodie - is the highlight, but the other characters, like an outstanding relay team, support him admirably and occasionally even steal the limelight.

Talking of the modern day knight: Jackson is more middle aged, less glib, and not as slick as Chandler's Marlowe, but that makes him all the more compelling. He is a character that men and women of all ages can hope to relate to, and that is without being a saccharine paragon of virtue.

This is one of the few books I'd recommend to anyone that I know and like. It make be the third of a series, but it's connections to the previous books are not instrinsic, and I believe an Atkinson virgin (a wild Artemis, but not in a good way, perhaps!) would enjoy this as much as I did.

Buy it now!



Short, simple, but profoundly moving, 01 Sep 2008
Whether through its shortness of length or through the familiarity with typical Paul Auster subject matter, there seems to be a tendency in other reviews here so far to underestimate the true worth of the author's latest novel. Man in the Dark may indeed appear short and simple on the surface, but the importance of its subject matter and the emotional depth it covers is nonetheless remarkable.

Through August Brill, the man in the dark, Auster tries to make sense of the world through the medium of the writer spinning ideas in his head. Yes, that's nothing new with Auster and there's certainly a sense of post-modern reflection on the nature of writing and the duty of the writer, but as with Brooklyn Follies and his collection of True Tales Of American Life, Auster is interested in ordinary people and the impact of the exceptional or significant moments on their lives.

Those significant events affecting American people today are alluded to in the book's references to Iraq and the Twin Towers. It's not Auster's intention to confront such grand events, however significant they might seem, but to reduce them to the smaller scale in considering how people learn to deal with such experiences. That does not make Man In The Dark a lesser work. Through memories, shared experiences of joy and suffering, through the fictions they create and the movies they watch, his characters struggle to make sense of an absurd world ever more inclined to bring new unspeakable horrors. Auster masterfully brings these all together into a profoundly moving piece that is richer in meaning and worth than its apparent brevity suggests.

Typical Auster fare, but mmensely readable, 31 Aug 2008
Man in the Dark is typical Auster fare. It contains stories within stories within stories, and it plays with the concept that people can inhabit more than one world. It also explores memory, and the differences, if any, between the real and imagined.

It is told through the eyes of August Brill, a 72-year-old invalid, who dreams up stories in his head as a way of overcoming his insomnia. One of these stories is about a young man who awakens in a parallel universe in which September 11 did not happen. The America he finds himself in is not the calm, peaceful nation one would expect but a country at war with itself resulting from the secession of New York and a host of other states unhappy with the 2000 election result that put George W. Bush in power.

It's a horrifying glimpse of another world that might have been. It reads like something that Cormac McCarthy and Stephen King might have colluded on. It's dark, menacing and incredibly realistic.

But this is but one narrative thread of Man in the Dark. There is another in which the grieving August Brill recounts his marriage and long life with his now dead but much-loved Sonia to his granddaughter, Katya, who also suffers from insomnia. Katya, too, is grieving for the loss of her boyfriend, Titus, who was murdered in Iraq, and she stalls her grief by watching world movies with her grandfather all day long.

Later, the story of Titus's untimely death, is also spelled out. So what results is a novel composed of many different stories that share common themes including love, loss, loneliness, fear and war.

Man in the Dark is an immensely readable book that moves along at a fast pace, so fast that I was able to read it in one sitting. There's little clutter, but there's a lot of stuff going on, too much, probably, to absorb in one reading. Whether the diehard fans will like it as much as me remains to be seen, but I thought it was an enjoyable, affecting and thought-provoking read, one that I am sure will linger in my mind for a long time to come.

The weird world of Paul Auster rolls back into town, 27 Aug 2008
The first half of the book has an alternative universe thing going on which kept making me think of a high school kid trying to rewrite Terminator it was just so cringey; I think intentionally bad and overdramatic dialogue, plus an old man, August Brill, lying in bed inventing it all.

Yet in the second half, the story became for me much more moving, about family, forgiveness, and the redemptive power of stories. Brill and his grief-stricken granddaughter Katya watch old movies together and re-tell the plots later; the story of Brill's own complicated marriage emerges during a long dark night chat with Katya.

There are chunks of the story missing as far as I'm concerned - I wanted to know more about Miriam, Brill's daughter! - and it won't go on my list of his best books ever, but by the last few pages, I was weeping (as usual with his books) and I found it in the end incredibly moving. Don't miss it if you are a fan, but be prepared for that weird meta-science fiction slant to start with...

Dark Dreams, Dark Politics, 22 Aug 2008
Quite a few of Auster's novels have a surreal quality. Man in the Dark does too. In this case, it's an almost science fictional scenario - an alternate America where civil war has broken out and the United States has become the Disunited States.

This imagined world exists only in the mind of August Brill, an elderly man (in the real world) lying in bed recovering from an accident that has left him immobile. Brill's imaginary excursions into this parallel world are interspersed with comparatively mundane real world scenes that begin to paint a picture of his views, his life and his family. There's also an interesting recursive aspect to the alternate America scenario (which I won't elaborate on here for fear of giving away the plot) that adds a further surreal dimension to the story.

The parallel reality aspect of the story ends about two thirds of the way through the book, which is a shame because I found the whole concept quite fascinating and very entertaining. Most of the rest of the book consists of a discussion between Brill and his granddaughter Katya in which Brill recounts the story of his marriage and Katya grapples with guilt over the death in Iraq of her former boyfriend who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists.

For me, America's military involvement in Iraq is the major theme of the book. In Brill's alternate reality, the Twin Towers remain standing and America does not go to war in Iraq. Instead, it self-destructs. In the real world, American soldiers die fighting and others (like Katya's boyfriend) die simply because they're Americans in the wrong place at the wrong time. The implication seems to be that America's interventionist foreign policy is an alternative to the complete breakdown of national unity; that war somehow holds the nation together, albeit tenuously. I don't think Auster is advocating the policy, but rather asking whether it's really worth it even if the alternative is confronting some pretty unpleasant realities at home.

Man in the Dark is Auster's most political book to date, but it's not ponderous or sanctimonious. It's fundamentally a story about a man and his family. The politics kind of lurks in the background. It's a book that needs to be read more than once, I think (and it's short enough for that not to be a burden). I enjoyed it a lot. It's provocative and imaginative, as good literature should be.




More meta-fictional mediocrity from Auster, 20 Aug 2008

This novella ultimately speaks to leftist American fantasies of what might have been following the effective coup de gras of the 2000 election, and of a subsequent fantasy usurpation of the hegemony of the Bush administration (Auster was one of a coterie of writers who remarked in 2004 That if Bush got re-elected he would leave America. He did not.)

From a narrative viewpoint, August Brill re-imagines an ersatz post-2000 America in which none of the "Bush-crimes" that we know occur, and tells the story of Owen Brick, (Barack Obama???) a reluctant hero figure who goes through the exact same trajectory of countless other Auster protagonists - memory loss, identity crisis, sex with beautiful stranger, physical violence and an ignominious and ambiguous death. This plot had some promise but is jettisoned 2/3rds of the way through the book for no apparent reason other than Brill (Auster) can't be arsed finishing it. The rest of the book features Brill lying in bed waffling for hours about how his dead wife, his decapitated granddaughters boyfriend and the remorse he feels for the whole mess. The original Brick narrative is not even given a mention after.

The writing is sparse, which is fine if you're Raymond Carver but the novella features some truly cringing scenes, (notably the 73 year Brill lying in bed at 4 in the morning with his granddaughter telling her about the anal sex he had with her grandmother.) which from a narrative viewpoint are as irrelevant as they are turgid.

Paul Auster hasn't written a good novel since Oracle Night, and has not written an important novel since Moon Palace. Like DeLillo, Auster pointedly fails to address the fallout of the defining moment of his time. The waning powers of these behemoths of American literature is sometimes uncomfortable to witness.

As a person who was always both stimulated and entertained by Auster's novels I feel disappointed. It is as if he has forgotten how to tell stories, or rather he cant be bothered finishing them. If you want to original read literature that really confronts 9/11 read Safran Foer or Lydia Davis. For all the fetishization of the primacy of the Author in Man in the Dark, Auster does not deliver. The failure of his characters to tell stories is sadly matched by his own.

How to do theocratic dystopia..., 12 Aug 2008
A truly great book, particular for those who have cold feet about Speculative Fiction (aka Sci Fi). A post-apocalyptic take on loss, resistance, feminism and social order of the patriarchal kind, The Handmaid's Tale avoids both cliche and the pretensions that can often plague even the best of novels with political undertows. I can think of few books which so well capture the sense of radical transformation and dislocation that must come with what someone once called the 'orgasms of history', those decisive events that change utterly social structures and somehow drag individuals along with them, even though people remain dominated by much the same loves and hopes they always were. The evocations of ritual, ceremony and punishment are particularly disturbing and resonant, even viscerally so. And, despite creating a deeply believable metaphor both for those changes that have been and those yet to come, Atwood also accomplishes the 'page turner' quality usually reserved for shallow thrillers. Just shy of being a masterpiece.

Love this book!, 22 Jul 2008
I read this novel for the first time last week and I loved it!! I couldn't put it down!!

Disturbing and thought provoking., 12 Jul 2008
Having read `1984' and `Brave New World', I was convinced Margaret Atwood's tale of dystopia in 21st century America would do little to add to the stark pictures already painted so vividly by Huxley and Orwell. However to witness, which is what the reader is able to do thanks to her wonderfully descriptive prose, this world through the eyes of a female creates an entirely new perspective on a time when life is produced for its functionality alone. Atwood constructs a society where women are at the crux of all activity yet it is still governed by men - it is hard to say which gender takes precedence and who has more control. This is a harrowing tale where the disposability of women continually shocked me as well as the brutality of those in power. I can't give this book five stars however, despite the fact that I enjoyed it immensely, due to the ending which left me slightly disappointed; while it is clearly thought provoking, I felt slightly betrayed having come so far with one character. Still, a book well worth reading.

Almost fabulous, 28 Jun 2008
God that was depressing! The author does a good job of bringing her character to life and describing the bizarre circumstances, it's just a shame that the end is so rushed and that it's not really finished.

What is all the fuss about?, 19 May 2008
I really don't understand why so many people gave this book five stars- in my opinion a five star book is 100% perfect, good story and good writing- this is not one of those books. I had to read this for A level literature and despite being an avid reader I really did feel this was a struggle.
I can admit that the story, the concept, is a good idea. The themes are interesting, so how did it turn out to be such a boring read? Probably because of the writing, its awful and boring, it drags and I just could be bothered to read it, so much so that I skipped and skim read large parts despite having an exam on it.
In conclusion, good idea, rubbish to read.

Elizabeth Bennet is the perfect Austen heroine: intelligent, generous, sensible, incapable of jealousy or any other major sin. That makes her sound like an insufferable goody-goody, but the truth is she's a completely hip character who ,if provoked, is not above skewering her antagonist with a piece of her exceptionally sharp, yet always polite, 18th-century wit. The real point of the book though, the critical question which will keep you fixated throughout, is: will Elizabeth and Mr Darcy hook up? Read this genuine all-time classic and discover the answer while enjoying a story that has charmed generation after generation.

Awful , 31 Aug 2008
To be perfectly honest, I must say I deeply regret buying this book now.

First of all, the plot unfolds in a very messy manner: too many unnecessary characters; too much drama; too many tragic (redundant) stories. As one of the previous reviews mentions, the Needler family's stories are completely unnecessary, misplaced everywhere, consequently not blending in with the rest of the plot at all. Why does Marcus have to die in the plot? What significance does it bring to the plot? I'm totally lost here.

Moreover, I can't stop feeling that the plot was put to an end in haste, leaving readers with a lot of confusion. It appears that this author put almost all the characters through so much tragedy and drama that she had to end the plot in haste, not being able to melt it all together in an elegant way. To reiterate, some of the drama and personal tragedies are completely redundant.

This book is a sheer disappointment and hence I wouldn't recommend this
book to anyone. In fact, this disappointment has become even greater because the book I'd read before was another bestselling book entitled 'no time for good bye' written by Linwood Barclay, which was brilliant incomparably to Kate Atkinson's book.

I wish I could get a refund.

A little cluttered, though I'm still a big fan, 27 Aug 2008
I love Kate Atkinson's writing (I don't usually buy books in hardback!) and did enjoy this novel, finishing it in a matter of days.

However, I can't deny that it felt a little cluttered - too many perspectives; too many personal tragedies; too much drama and bloody violence. I felt that an awful lot had been packed in along the way and it began to feel unrealistic and unsubtle.

To my mind, the Needler story was unnecessary; Reggie's personal circumstances went from bad to unlikely; and all the key characters were a little too connected. A bit of coincidence is one thing, but this went too far. Perhaps it was meant to feel 'fateful' but it didn't quite work for me.

When writing from Jackson Brodie's perspective Kate Atkinson seems at her most comfortable, he's a rounded character and totally believable. For me, Reggie was endearing but didn't quite ring true and I am not at all keen on her new pet character, Louise Munroe. Not that it's vital to always like characters in novels, but she's clearly being established as a heroine, perhaps equal to Jackson, but for me she has few redeeming features. I simply don't want to know much more about her.

Given Kate Atkinson's talents as a writer (her colourful prose and characterisation draw the reader in from the very start) I feel she doesn't need to rely so heavily on crime as a genre. She built up her initial tale of the Mason family in a compelling way, only to destroy them a few pages later. It felt like a waste. I remember feeling the same way about Case Histories.

I look forward to her next novel but hope she tones down the crime elements just a little and focuses on her characters and insights into their lives and loves.

Another excellent read...., 27 Aug 2008
Kate Atkinson is one of the few authors I rush to buy in hard back and yet again I was not disappointed. This book is definitely 'unputdownable' and I was quite upset I finished it so quickly. A great read. Jackson Brodie is the most interesting and charismatic fictional detective I've met in many years and I can't wait for the next one....!

A Dip at the End, 20 Aug 2008


I endorse all the previous praise. I love Atkinson's work. It is a refreshing change from the current spare 'writing course' novels. She breaks all the rules and I love it. The only criticism I have is that after gripping my attention so that I could not wait to get back to it, it suddenly lost 'thrust' and I felt the ending became rushed and rather laboured. All in all though, a very good read

It may sound strange, but: , 18 Aug 2008
I constantly found myself thinking that Kate Atkinson has evolved into an unlikely combination of the current William Gibson, and Raymond Chandler.

Anyone who knows these authors will take that as a strong recommendation indeed.

William Gibson and Kate Atkinson might not seem like an obvious comparison, but there are two similarities in its favour:
1. They both know people and culture. In some ways, Atkinson is as close to the cutting edge of what it's like to live in our times as Gibson's immediate futurism.
2. The narrative strands remind me of Gibson's masterful use of differing perspectives leading towards a unified conclusion. All of the protagonists are solid, and, unlike most multiple narrative novels, I didn't find myself sighing upon seeing that I was about to read a "boring" viewpoint. Obviously Atkinson's modern day knight - Jackson Brodie - is the highlight, but the other characters, like an outstanding relay team, support him admirably and occasionally even steal the limelight.

Talking of the modern day knight: Jackson is more middle aged, less glib, and not as slick as Chandler's Marlowe, but that makes him all the more compelling. He is a character that men and women of all ages can hope to relate to, and that is without being a saccharine paragon of virtue.

This is one of the few books I'd recommend to anyone that I know and like. It make be the third of a series, but it's connections to the previous books are not instrinsic, and I believe an Atkinson virgin (a wild Artemis, but not in a good way, perhaps!) would enjoy this as much as I did.

Buy it now!



Short, simple, but profoundly moving, 01 Sep 2008
Whether through its shortness of length or through the familiarity with typical Paul Auster subject matter, there seems to be a tendency in other reviews here so far to underestimate the true worth of the author's latest novel. Man in the Dark may indeed appear short and simple on the surface, but the importance of its subject matter and the emotional depth it covers is nonetheless remarkable.

Through August Brill, the man in the dark, Auster tries to make sense of the world through the medium of the writer spinning ideas in his head. Yes, that's nothing new with Auster and there's certainly a sense of post-modern reflection on the nature of writing and the duty of the writer, but as with Brooklyn Follies and his collection of True Tales Of American Life, Auster is interested in ordinary people and the impact of the exceptional or significant moments on their lives.

Those significant events affecting American people today are alluded to in the book's references to Iraq and the Twin Towers. It's not Auster's intention to confront such grand events, however significant they might seem, but to reduce them to the smaller scale in considering how people learn to deal with such experiences. That does not make Man In The Dark a lesser work. Through memories, shared experiences of joy and suffering, through the fictions they create and the movies they watch, his characters struggle to make sense of an absurd world ever more inclined to bring new unspeakable horrors. Auster masterfully brings these all together into a profoundly moving piece that is richer in meaning and worth than its apparent brevity suggests.

Typical Auster fare, but mmensely readable, 31 Aug 2008
Man in the Dark is typical Auster fare. It contains stories within stories within stories, and it plays with the concept that people can inhabit more than one world. It also explores memory, and the differences, if any, between the real and imagined.

It is told through the eyes of August Brill, a 72-year-old invalid, who dreams up stories in his head as a way of overcoming his insomnia. One of these stories is about a young man who awakens in a parallel universe in which September 11 did not happen. The America he finds himself in is not the calm, peaceful nation one would expect but a country at war with itself resulting from the secession of New York and a host of other states unhappy with the 2000 election result that put George W. Bush in power.

It's a horrifying glimpse of another world that might have been. It reads like something that Cormac McCarthy and Stephen King might have colluded on. It's dark, menacing and incredibly realistic.

But this is but one narrative thread of Man in the Dark. There is another in which the grieving August Brill recounts his marriage and long life with his now dead but much-loved Sonia to his granddaughter, Katya, who also suffers from insomnia. Katya, too, is grieving for the loss of her boyfriend, Titus, who was murdered in Iraq, and she stalls her grief by watching world movies with her grandfather all day long.

Later, the story of Titus's untimely death, is also spelled out. So what results is a novel composed of many different stories that share common themes including love, loss, loneliness, fear and war.

Man in the Dark is an immensely readable book that moves along at a fast pace, so fast that I was able to read it in one sitting. There's little clutter, but there's a lot of stuff going on, too much, probably, to absorb in one reading. Whether the diehard fans will like it as much as me remains to be seen, but I thought it was an enjoyable, affecting and thought-provoking read, one that I am sure will linger in my mind for a long time to come.

The weird world of Paul Auster rolls back into town, 27 Aug 2008
The first half of the book has an alternative universe thing going on which kept making me think of a high school kid trying to rewrite Terminator it was just so cringey; I think intentionally bad and overdramatic dialogue, plus an old man, August Brill, lying in bed inventing it all.

Yet in the second half, the story became for me much more moving, about family, forgiveness, and the redemptive power of stories. Brill and his grief-stricken granddaughter Katya watch old movies together and re-tell the plots later; the story of Brill's own complicated marriage emerges during a long dark night chat with Katya.

There are chunks of the story missing as far as I'm concerned - I wanted to know more about Miriam, Brill's daughter! - and it won't go on my list of his best books ever, but by the last few pages, I was weeping (as usual with his books) and I found it in the end incredibly moving. Don't miss it if you are a fan, but be prepared for that weird meta-science fiction slant to start with...

Dark Dreams, Dark Politics, 22 Aug 2008
Quite a few of Auster's novels have a surreal quality. Man in the Dark does too. In this case, it's an almost science fictional scenario - an alternate America where civil war has broken out and the United States has become the Disunited States.

This imagined world exists only in the mind of August Brill, an elderly man (in the real world) lying in bed recovering from an accident that has left him immobile. Brill's imaginary excursions into this parallel world are interspersed with comparatively mundane real world scenes that begin to paint a picture of his views, his life and his family. There's also an interesting recursive aspect to the alternate America scenario (which I won't elaborate on here for fear of giving away the plot) that adds a further surreal dimension to the story.

The parallel reality aspect of the story ends about two thirds of the way through the book, which is a shame because I found the whole concept quite fascinating and very entertaining. Most of the rest of the book consists of a discussion between Brill and his granddaughter Katya in which Brill recounts the story of his marriage and Katya grapples with guilt over the death in Iraq of her former boyfriend who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists.

For me, America's military involvement in Iraq is the major theme of the book. In Brill's alternate reality, the Twin Towers remain standing and America does not go to war in Iraq. Instead, it self-destructs. In the real world, American soldiers die fighting and others (like Katya's boyfriend) die simply because they're Americans in the wrong place at the wrong time. The implication seems to be that America's interventionist foreign policy is an alternative to the complete breakdown of national unity; that war somehow holds the nation together, albeit tenuously. I don't think Auster is advocating the policy, but rather asking whether it's really worth it even if the alternative is confronting some pretty unpleasant realities at home.

Man in the Dark is Auster's most political book to date, but it's not ponderous or sanctimonious. It's fundamentally a story about a man and his family. The politics kind of lurks in the background. It's a book that needs to be read more than once, I think (and it's short enough for that not to be a burden). I enjoyed it a lot. It's provocative and imaginative, as good literature should be.




More meta-fictional mediocrity from Auster, 20 Aug 2008

This novella ultimately speaks to leftist American fantasies of what might have been following the effective coup de gras of the 2000 election, and of a subsequent fantasy usurpation of the hegemony of the Bush administration (Auster was one of a coterie of writers who remarked in 2004 That if Bush got re-elected he would leave America. He did not.)

From a narrative viewpoint, August Brill re-imagines an ersatz post-2000 America in which none of the "Bush-crimes" that we know occur, and tells the story of Owen Brick, (Barack Obama???) a reluctant hero figure who goes through the exact same trajectory of countless other Auster protagonists - memory loss, identity crisis, sex with beautiful stranger, physical violence and an ignominious and ambiguous death. This plot had some promise but is jettisoned 2/3rds of the way through the book for no apparent reason other than Brill (Auster) can't be arsed finishing it. The rest of the book features Brill lying in bed waffling for hours about how his dead wife, his decapitated granddaughters boyfriend and the remorse he feels for the whole mess. The original Brick narrative is not even given a mention after.

The writing is sparse, which is fine if you're Raymond Carver but the novella features some truly cringing scenes, (notably the 73 year Brill lying in bed at 4 in the morning with his granddaughter telling her about the anal sex he had with her grandmother.) which from a narrative viewpoint are as irrelevant as they are turgid.

Paul Auster hasn't written a good novel since Oracle Night, and has not written an important novel since Moon Palace. Like DeLillo, Auster pointedly fails to address the fallout of the defining moment of his time. The waning powers of these behemoths of American literature is sometimes uncomfortable to witness.

As a person who was always both stimulated and entertained by Auster's novels I feel disappointed. It is as if he has forgotten how to tell stories, or rather he cant be bothered finishing them. If you want to original read literature that really confronts 9/11 read Safran Foer or Lydia Davis. For all the fetishization of the primacy of the Author in Man in the Dark, Auster does not deliver. The failure of his characters to tell stories is sadly matched by his own.

How to do theocratic dystopia..., 12 Aug 2008
A truly great book, particular for those who have cold feet about Speculative Fiction (aka Sci Fi). A post-apocalyptic take on loss, resistance, feminism and social order of the patriarchal kind, The Handmaid's Tale avoids both cliche and the pretensions that can often plague even the best of novels with political undertows. I can think of few books which so well capture the sense of radical transformation and dislocation that must come with what someone once called the 'orgasms of history', those decisive events that change utterly social structures and somehow drag individuals along with them, even though people remain dominated by much the same loves and hopes they always were. The evocations of ritual, ceremony and punishment are particularly disturbing and resonant, even viscerally so. And, despite creating a deeply believable metaphor both for those changes that have been and those yet to come, Atwood also accomplishes the 'page turner' quality usually reserved for shallow thrillers. Just shy of being a masterpiece.

Love this book!, 22 Jul 2008
I read this novel for the first time last week and I loved it!! I couldn't put it down!!

Disturbing and thought provoking., 12 Jul 2008
Having read `1984' and `Brave New World', I was convinced Margaret Atwood's tale of dystopia in 21st century America would do little to add to the stark pictures already painted so vividly by Huxley and Orwell. However to witness, which is what the reader is able to do thanks to her wonderfully descriptive prose, this world through the eyes of a female creates an entirely new perspective on a time when life is produced for its functionality alone. Atwood constructs a society where women are at the crux of all activity yet it is still governed by men - it is hard to say which gender takes precedence and who has more control. This is a harrowing tale where the disposability of women continually shocked me as well as the brutality of those in power. I can't give this book five stars however, despite the fact that I enjoyed it immensely, due to the ending which left me slightly disappointed; while it is clearly thought provoking, I felt slightly betrayed having come so far with one character. Still, a book well worth reading.

Almost fabulous, 28 Jun 2008
God that was depressing! The author does a good job of bringing her character to life and describing the bizarre circumstances, it's just a shame that the end is so rushed and that it's not really finished.

What is all the fuss about?, 19 May 2008
I really don't understand why so many people gave this book five stars- in my opinion a five star book is 100% perfect, good story and good writing- this is not one of those books. I had to read this for A level literature and despite being an avid reader I really did feel this was a struggle.
I can admit that the story, the concept, is a good idea. The themes are interesting, so how did it turn out to be such a boring read? Probably because of the writing, its awful and boring, it drags and I just could be bothered to read it, so much so that I skipped and skim read large parts despite having an exam on it.
In conclusion, good idea, rubbish to read.

Who am I to critique such a classic work by Jane Austen?, 30 Jul 2008
Not someone properly suited for such a task, I can tell you that. What I can do, however, is give an honest and heartfelt account of what I thought of Jane Austen's 'PRIDE & PREJUDICE'. I have always wanted to read some of the classics but have never up until now dug up the courage to actually do so. I thought if I was going to start reading a classic novel Jane Austen would probably be a good author to start with and what better choice was there than her stand out 'PRIDE & PREJUDICE' ? I was pleased to find out that I was absolutely right. 'PRIDE & PREJUDICE' has to be one of the most romantic novels that I have ever read. The romance between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy literally made me swoon quite often (and I don't swoon!). Romance mixed with a little bit of drama and Austen's most descriptive prose made it impossible for me to put this book down. Now I see why 'PRIDE & PREJUDICE' is on so many people's favorites list because now it is most certainly on mine.

Fantastic - a timeless classic, 26 Jun 2008
The plot and principal characters are well known. I read this possibly six times in school when I was 14. What emerges for me from reading this much later is that neither Elizabeth, nor Darcy are - initially at least - the perfect, but misunderstood human beings of the screen versions. Darcy, it is clear, is an insufferable snob and it is not at all clear that he ever gets past this. Yes, in the end he has no problem in accepting Elizabeth despite her relatively low social station - that is because he has fallen in love with her. But is he really as transformed as Elizabeth believes by the end of the novel? Does it even matter to her, as Elizabeth will now ascend to a higher social station anyway? Elizabeth is also utterly quick to judge and with Wickham for example, is blind to his faults despite the clear evidence of his mercenary motivations as amply pointed out to her by Mrs Gardiner. What one has to remember however is that Elizabeth is only 21 and Darcy probably no more than 26. They can be forgiven their failings (Elizabeth her prejudice, Darcy his pride and haughtiness) to some extent. This is a novel as much about growing up and reaching maturity, as it is about the danger of judging on first impressions.

Another aspect that one does not appreciate at 14 is the social background to the novel. It is a time of the emergence of mass consumerism in England and of rapid technological and economic innovation. England was the cradle of capitalism and here it is being perfected at this time. This is evident throughout the novel and money and all things money related are always part of the main event.

Although Austen was a master of the novel form, this is not a perfect novel. Compare for example the crisp, no nonsense, galloping opening chapters with some of the final chapters that completely belabour the Wickham episode and how they slow down the narrative and plot resolution. These minor criticisms aside, P&P is a stunning achievement by a literary genius and it will never lose its appeal.


Perfect!, 26 May 2008
Austen's best novel and one of the best in English Literature. A completely realistic and loveable cast of characters and one of the great love stories of all time. It should be compulsary to read this book.

Fabulous!, 17 Mar 2008
Although I don't look like a bookwormy type (unless you know me), this is my favorite book. I read it first aged 11 and now aged nearly 13, it continues to guide me. I own a much abused copy of all the jane austen books which I continue to read, even when in class, when I am reading it under the desk in Latin (which is no mean feat! Do you know how thick it is?!?) or when eat chocolate.

My favorite parts are when Lizzie realises that Mr Darcy isn't as bad as she think's he his, and he has actually secretly been helping her.


EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS!

A nice plunge into the past, 08 Mar 2008
The core character in this novel is Elizabeth, an attractive and intelligent 20 year-old and the second daughter (out of five) of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. . Her mother's main interest is to see her five daughters, all eligible, nicely settled down and married to respectable and rich gentlemen.
Elizabeth's personality, very unlike her mother's, unfolds throughout the pages in a crescendo of emotions resulting from various issues connected with the whole family saga and especially to her own contrasting feelings towards a certain young man, Mr. Darcy. Will Elizabeth's passionate and sensible nature, combined with a certain degree of boldness (for those days), make her discover what lies beyond his seemingly unpleasant and unreadable personality?
The graceful politeness in the prose is charming, delineating a faithful image of life at the end of the 18th century in England.

The intrigues beyond wished-for marriages are very accurately described by Ms. Austen, with a touch of humour "hither and thither". I could not help myself comparing similar issues with nowadays. Beyond the characterisation and a part from the language, style and general progress, I believe that human nature, as depicted, is the same as it always was and it is not all just about "love", it is also about people attempting to incorporate into a higher position in society, seeking integration at a greater level. It was also interesting, I thought, to see how relevant (or irrelevant) the "worth" bestowed on the female gender was back then, compared to the present day in most societies. This, combined with the rapidity with which one fell in love, got engaged and/or was forbidden or denied to marry, could be stimulating subjects for ensuing conversations.

One of the most widely read novels from Nigeria's most famous novelist, Things Fall Apart is a gripping study of the problem of European colonialism in Africa. The story relates the cultural collision that occurs when Christian English missionaries arrive among the Ibos of Nigeria, bringing along their European ways of life and religion. In the novel, the Nigerian Okonkwo recognizes the cultural imperialism of the white men and tries to show his own people how their own society will fall apart if they exchange their own cultural core for that of the English.

Awful , 31 Aug 2008
To be perfectly honest, I must say I deeply regret buying this book now.

First of all, the plot unfolds in a very messy manner: too many unnecessary characters; too much drama; too many tragic (redundant) stories. As one of the previous reviews mentions, the Needler family's stories are completely unnecessary, misplaced everywhere, consequently not blending in with the rest of the plot at all. Why does Marcus have to die in the plot? What significance does it bring to the plot? I'm totally lost here.

Moreover, I can't stop feeling that the plot was put to an end in haste, leaving readers with a lot of confusion. It appears that this author put almost all the characters through so much tragedy and drama that she had to end the plot in haste, not being able to melt it all together in an elegant way. To reiterate, some of the drama and personal tragedies are completely redundant.

This book is a sheer disappointment and hence I wouldn't recommend this
book to anyone. In fact, this disappointment has become even greater because the book I'd read before was another bestselling book entitled 'no time for good bye' written by Linwood Barclay, which was brilliant incomparably to Kate Atkinson's book.

I wish I could get a refund.

A little cluttered, though I'm still a big fan, 27 Aug 2008
I love Kate Atkinson's writing (I don't usually buy books in hardback!) and did enjoy this novel, finishing it in a matter of days.

However, I can't deny that it felt a little cluttered - too many perspectives; too many personal tragedies; too much drama and bloody violence. I felt that an awful lot had been packed in along the way and it began to feel unrealistic and unsubtle.

To my mind, the Needler story was unnecessary; Reggie's personal circumstances went from bad to unlikely; and all the key characters were a little too connected. A bit of coincidence is one thing, but this went too far. Perhaps it was meant to feel 'fateful' but it didn't quite work for me.

When writing from Jackson Brodie's perspective Kate Atkinson seems at her most comfortable, he's a rounded character and totally believable. For me, Reggie was endearing but didn't quite ring true and I am not at all keen on her new pet character, Louise Munroe. Not that it's vital to always like characters in novels, but she's clearly being established as a heroine, perhaps equal to Jackson, but for me she has few redeeming features. I simply don't want to know much more about her.

Given Kate Atkinson's talents as a writer (her colourful prose and characterisation draw the reader in from the very start) I feel she doesn't need to rely so heavily on crime as a genre. She built up her initial tale of the Mason family in a compelling way, only to destroy them a few pages later. It felt like a waste. I remember feeling the same way about Case Histories.

I look forward to her next novel but hope she tones down the crime elements just a little and focuses on her characters and insights into their lives and loves.

Another excellent read...., 27 Aug 2008
Kate Atkinson is one of the few authors I rush to buy in hard back and yet again I was not disappointed. This book is definitely 'unputdownable' and I was quite upset I finished it so quickly. A great read. Jackson Brodie is the most interesting and charismatic fictional detective I've met in many years and I can't wait for the next one....!

A Dip at the End, 20 Aug 2008


I endorse all the previous praise. I love Atkinson's work. It is a refreshing change from the current spare 'writing course' novels. She breaks all the rules and I love it. The only criticism I have is that after gripping my attention so that I could not wait to get back to it, it suddenly lost 'thrust' and I felt the ending became rushed and rather laboured. All in all though, a very good read

It may sound strange, but: , 18 Aug 2008
I constantly found myself thinking that Kate Atkinson has evolved into an unlikely combination of the current William Gibson, and Raymond Chandler.

Anyone who knows these authors will take that as a strong recommendation indeed.

William Gibson and Kate Atkinson might not seem like an obvious comparison, but there are two similarities in its favour:
1. They both know people and culture. In some ways, Atkinson is as close to the cutting edge of what it's like to live in our times as Gibson's immediate futurism.
2. The narrative strands remind me of Gibson's masterful use of differing perspectives leading towards a unified conclusion. All of the protagonists are solid, and, unlike most multiple narrative novels, I didn't find myself sighing upon seeing that I was about to read a "boring" viewpoint. Obviously Atkinson's modern day knight - Jackson Brodie - is the highlight, but the other characters, like an outstanding relay team, support him admirably and occasionally even steal the limelight.

Talking of the modern day knight: Jackson is more middle aged, less glib, and not as slick as Chandler's Marlowe, but that makes him all the more compelling. He is a character that men and women of all ages can hope to relate to, and that is without being a saccharine paragon of virtue.

This is one of the few books I'd recommend to anyone that I know and like. It make be the third of a series, but it's connections to the previous books are not instrinsic, and I believe an Atkinson virgin (a wild Artemis, but not in a good way, perhaps!) would enjoy this as much as I did.

Buy it now!



Short, simple, but profoundly moving, 01 Sep 2008
Whether through its shortness of length or through the familiarity with typical Paul Auster subject matter, there seems to be a tendency in other reviews here so far to underestimate the true worth of the author's latest novel. Man in the Dark may indeed appear short and simple on the surface, but the importance of its subject matter and the emotional depth it covers is nonetheless remarkable.

Through August Brill, the man in the dark, Auster tries to make sense of the world through the medium of the writer spinning ideas in his head. Yes, that's nothing new with Auster and there's certainly a sense of post-modern reflection on the nature of writing and the duty of the writer, but as with Brooklyn Follies and his collection of True Tales Of American Life, Auster is interested in ordinary people and the impact of the exceptional or significant moments on their lives.

Those significant events affecting American people today are alluded to in the book's references to Iraq and the Twin Towers. It's not Auster's intention to confront such grand events, however significant they might seem, but to reduce them to the smaller scale in considering how people learn to deal with such experiences. That does not make Man In The Dark a lesser work. Through memories, shared experiences of joy and suffering, through the fictions they create and the movies they watch, his characters struggle to make sense of an absurd world ever more inclined to bring new unspeakable horrors. Auster masterfully brings these all together into a profoundly moving piece that is richer in meaning and worth than its apparent brevity suggests.

Typical Auster fare, but mmensely readable, 31 Aug 2008
Man in the Dark is typical Auster fare. It contains stories within stories within stories, and it plays with the concept that people can inhabit more than one world. It also explores memory, and the differences, if any, between the real and imagined.

It is told through the eyes of August Brill, a 72-year-old invalid, who dreams up stories in his head as a way of overcoming his insomnia. One of these stories is about a young man who awakens in a parallel universe in which September 11 did not happen. The America he finds himself in is not the calm, peaceful nation one would expect but a country at war with itself resulting from the secession of New York and a host of other states unhappy with the 2000 election result that put George W. Bush in power.

It's a horrifying glimpse of another world that might have been. It reads like something that Cormac McCarthy and Stephen King might have colluded on. It's dark, menacing and incredibly realistic.

But this is but one narrative thread of Man in the Dark. There is another in which the grieving August Brill recounts his marriage and long life with his now dead but much-loved Sonia to his granddaughter, Katya, who also suffers from insomnia. Katya, too, is grieving for the loss of her boyfriend, Titus, who was murdered in Iraq, and she stalls her grief by watching world movies with her grandfather all day long.

Later, the story of Titus's untimely death, is also spelled out. So what results is a novel composed of many different stories that share common themes including love, loss, loneliness, fear and war.

Man in the Dark is an immensely readable book that moves along at a fast pace, so fast that I was able to read it in one sitting. There's little clutter, but there's a lot of stuff going on, too much, probably, to absorb in one reading. Whether the diehard fans will like it as much as me remains to be seen, but I thought it was an enjoyable, affecting and thought-provoking read, one that I am sure will linger in my mind for a long time to come.

The weird world of Paul Auster rolls back into town, 27 Aug 2008
The first half of the book has an alternative universe thing going on which kept making me think of a high school kid trying to rewrite Terminator it was just so cringey; I think intentionally bad and overdramatic dialogue, plus an old man, August Brill, lying in bed inventing it all.

Yet in the second half, the story became for me much more moving, about family, forgiveness, and the redemptive power of stories. Brill and his grief-stricken granddaughter Katya watch old movies together and re-tell the plots later; the story of Brill's own complicated marriage emerges during a long dark night chat with Katya.

There are chunks of the story missing as far as I'm concerned - I wanted to know more about Miriam, Brill's daughter! - and it won't go on my list of his best books ever, but by the last few pages, I was weeping (as usual with his books) and I found it in the end incredibly moving. Don't miss it if you are a fan, but be prepared for that weird meta-science fiction slant to start with...

Dark Dreams, Dark Politics, 22 Aug 2008
Quite a few of Auster's novels have a surreal quality. Man in the Dark does too. In this case, it's an almost science fictional scenario - an alternate America where civil war has broken out and the United States has become the Disunited States.

This imagined world exists only in the mind of August Brill, an elderly man (in the real world) lying in bed recovering from an accident that has left him immobile. Brill's imaginary excursions into this parallel world are interspersed with comparatively mundane real world scenes that begin to paint a picture of his views, his life and his family. There's also an interesting recursive aspect to the alternate America scenario (which I won't elaborate on here for fear of giving away the plot) that adds a further surreal dimension to the story.

The parallel reality aspect of the story ends about two thirds of the way through the book, which is a shame because I found the whole concept quite fascinating and very entertaining. Most of the rest of the book consists of a discussion between Brill and his granddaughter Katya in which Brill recounts the story of his marriage and Katya grapples with guilt over the death in Iraq of her former boyfriend who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists.

For me, America's military involvement in Iraq is the major theme of the book. In Brill's alternate reality, the Twin Towers remain standing and America does not go to war in Iraq. Instead, it self-destructs. In the real world, American soldiers die fighting and others (like Katya's boyfriend) die simply because they're Americans in the wrong place at the wrong time. The implication seems to be that America's interventionist foreign policy is an alternative to the complete breakdown of national unity; that war somehow holds the nation together, albeit tenuously. I don't think Auster is advocating the policy, but rather asking whether it's really worth it even if the alternative is confronting some pretty unpleasant realities at home.

Man in the Dark is Auster's most political book to date, but it's not ponderous or sanctimonious. It's fundamentally a story about a man and his family. The politics kind of lurks in the background. It's a book that needs to be read more than once, I think (and it's short enough for that not to be a burden). I enjoyed it a lot. It's provocative and imaginative, as good literature should be.




More meta-fictional mediocrity from Auster, 20 Aug 2008

This novella ultimately speaks to leftist American fantasies of what might have been following the effective coup de gras of the 2000 election, and of a subsequent fantasy usurpation of the hegemony of the Bush administration (Auster was one of a coterie of writers who remarked in 2004 That if Bush got re-elected he would leave America. He did not.)

From a narrative viewpoint, August Brill re-imagines an ersatz post-2000 America in which none of the "Bush-crimes" that we know occur, and tells the story of Owen Brick, (Barack Obama???) a reluctant hero figure who goes through the exact same trajectory of countless other Auster protagonists - memory loss, identity crisis, sex with beautiful stranger, physical violence and an ignominious and ambiguous death. This plot had some promise but is jettisoned 2/3rds of the way through the book for no apparent reason other than Brill (Auster) can't be arsed finishing it. The rest of the book features Brill lying in bed waffling for hours about how his dead wife, his decapitated granddaughters boyfriend and the remorse he feels for the whole mess. The original Brick narrative is not even given a mention after.

The writing is sparse, which is fine if you're Raymond Carver but the novella features some truly cringing scenes, (notably the 73 year Brill lying in bed at 4 in the morning with his granddaughter telling her about the anal sex he had with her grandmother.) which from a narrative viewpoint are as irrelevant as they are turgid.

Paul Auster hasn't written a good novel since Oracle Night, and has not written an important novel since Moon Palace. Like DeLillo, Auster pointedly fails to address the fallout of the defining moment of his time. The waning powers of these behemoths of American literature is sometimes uncomfortable to witness.

As a person who was always both stimulated and entertained by Auster's novels I feel disappointed. It is as if he has forgotten how to tell stories, or rather he cant be bothered finishing them. If you want to original read literature that really confronts 9/11 read Safran Foer or Lydia Davis. For all the fetishization of the primacy of the Author in Man in the Dark, Auster does not deliver. The failure of his characters to tell stories is sadly matched by his own.

How to do theocratic dystopia..., 12 Aug 2008
A truly great book, particular for those who have cold feet about Speculative Fiction (aka Sci Fi). A post-apocalyptic take on loss, resistance, feminism and social order of the patriarchal kind, The Handmaid's Tale avoids both cliche and the pretensions that can often plague even the best of novels with political undertows. I can think of few books which so well capture the sense of radical transformation and dislocation that must come with what someone once called the 'orgasms of history', those decisive events that change utterly social structures and somehow drag individuals along with them, even though people remain dominated by much the same loves and hopes they always were. The evocations of ritual, ceremony and punishment are particularly disturbing and resonant, even viscerally so. And, despite creating a deeply believable metaphor both for those changes that have been and those yet to come, Atwood also accomplishes the 'page turner' quality usually reserved for shallow thrillers. Just shy of being a masterpiece.

Love this book!, 22 Jul 2008
I read this novel for the first time last week and I loved it!! I couldn't put it down!!

Disturbing and thought provoking., 12 Jul 2008
Having read `1984' and `Brave New World', I was convinced Margaret Atwood's tale of dystopia in 21st century America would do little to add to the stark pictures already painted so vividly by Huxley and Orwell. However to witness, which is what the reader is able to do thanks to her wonderfully descriptive prose, this world through the eyes of a female creates an entirely new perspective on a time when life is produced for its functionality alone. Atwood constructs a society where women are at the crux of all activity yet it is still governed by men - it is hard to say which gender takes precedence and who has more control. This is a harrowing tale where the disposability of women continually shocked me as well as the brutality of those in power. I can't give this book five stars however, despite the fact that I enjoyed it immensely, due to the ending which left me slightly disappointed; while it is clearly thought provoking, I felt slightly betrayed having come so far with one character. Still, a book well worth reading.

Almost fabulous, 28 Jun 2008
God that was depressing! The author does a good job of bringing her character to life and describing the bizarre circumstances, it's just a shame that the end is so rushed and that it's not really finished.

What is all the fuss about?, 19 May 2008
I really don't understand why so many people gave this book five stars- in my opinion a five star book is 100% perfect, good story and good writing- this is not one of those books. I had to read this for A level literature and despite being an avid reader I really did feel this was a struggle.
I can admit that the story, the concept, is a good idea. The themes are interesting, so how did it turn out to be such a boring read? Probably because of the writing, its awful and boring, it drags and I just could be bothered to read it, so much so that I skipped and skim read large parts despite having an exam on it.
In conclusion, good idea, rubbish to read.

Who am I to critique such a classic work by Jane Austen?, 30 Jul 2008
Not someone properly suited for such a task, I can tell you that. What I can do, however, is give an honest and heartfelt account of what I thought of Jane Austen's 'PRIDE & PREJUDICE'. I have always wanted to read some of the classics but have never up until now dug up the courage to actually do so. I thought if I was going to start reading a classic novel Jane Austen would probably be a good author to start with and what better choice was there than her stand out 'PRIDE & PREJUDICE' ? I was pleased to find out that I was absolutely right. 'PRIDE & PREJUDICE' has to be one of the most romantic novels that I have ever read. The romance between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy literally made me swoon quite often (and I don't swoon!). Romance mixed with a little bit of drama and Austen's most descriptive prose made it impossible for me to put this book down. Now I see why 'PRIDE & PREJUDICE' is on so many people's favorites list because now it is most certainly on mine.

Fantastic - a timeless classic, 26 Jun 2008
The plot and principal characters are well known. I read this possibly six times in school when I was 14. What emerges for me from reading this much later is that neither Elizabeth, nor Darcy are - initially at least - the perfect, but misunderstood human beings of the screen versions. Darcy, it is clear, is an insufferable snob and it is not at all clear that he ever gets past this. Yes, in the end he has no problem in accepting Elizabeth despite her relatively low social station - that is because he has fallen in love with her. But is he really as transformed as Elizabeth believes by the end of the novel? Does it even matter to her, as Elizabeth will now ascend to a higher social station anyway? Elizabeth is also utterly quick to judge and with Wickham for example, is blind to his faults despite the clear evidence of his mercenary motivations as amply pointed out to her by Mrs Gardiner. What one has to remember however is that Elizabeth is only 21 and Darcy probably no more than 26. They can be forgiven their failings (Elizabeth her prejudice, Darcy his pride and haughtiness) to some extent. This is a novel as much about growing up and reaching maturity, as it is about the danger of judging on first impressions.

Another aspect that one does not appreciate at 14 is the social background to the novel. It is a time of the emergence of mass consumerism in England and of rapid technological and economic innovation. England was the cradle of capitalism and here it is being perfected at this time. This is evident throughout the novel and money and all things money related are always part of the main event.

Although Austen was a master of the novel form, this is not a perfect novel. Compare for example the crisp, no nonsense, galloping opening chapters with some of the final chapters that completely belabour the Wickham episode and how they slow down the narrative and plot resolution. These minor criticisms aside, P&P is a stunning achievement by a literary genius and it will never lose its appeal.


Perfect!, 26 May 2008
Austen's best novel and one of the best in English Literature. A completely realistic and loveable cast of characters and one of the great love stories of all time. It should be compulsary to read this book.

Fabulous!, 17 Mar 2008
Although I don't look like a bookwormy type (unless you know me), this is my favorite book. I read it first aged 11 and now aged nearly 13, it continues to guide me. I own a much abused copy of all the jane austen books which I continue to read, even when in class, when I am reading it under the desk in Latin (which is no mean feat! Do you know how thick it is?!?) or when eat chocolate.

My favorite parts are when Lizzie realises that Mr Darcy isn't as bad as she think's he his, and he has actually secretly been helping her.


EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS!

A nice plunge into the past, 08 Mar 2008
The core character in this novel is Elizabeth, an attractive and intelligent 20 year-old and the second daughter (out of five) of Mr. and Mrs. Bennet. . Her mother's main interest is to see her five daughters, all eligible, nicely settled down and married to respectable and rich gentlemen.
Elizabeth's personality, very unlike her mother's, unfolds throughout the pages in a crescendo of emotions resulting from various issues connected with the whole family saga and especially to her own contrasting feelings towards a certain young man, Mr. Darcy. Will Elizabeth's passionate and sensible nature, combined with a certain degree of boldness (for those days), make her discover what lies beyond his seemingly unpleasant and unreadable personality?
The graceful politeness in the prose is charming, delineating a faithful image of life at the end of the 18th century in England.

The intrigues beyond wished-for marriages are very accurately described by Ms. Austen, with a touch of humour "hither and thither". I could not help myself comparing similar issues with nowadays. Beyond the characterisation and a part from the language, style and general progress, I believe that human nature, as depicted, is the same as it always was and it is not all just about "love", it is also about people attempting to incorporate into a higher position in society, seeking integration at a greater level. It was also interesting, I thought, to see how relevant (or irrelevant) the "worth" bestowed on the female gender was back then, compared to the present day in most societies. This, combined with the rapidity with which one fell in love, got engaged and/or was forbidden or denied to marry, could be stimulating subjects for ensuing conversations.


The first authentic African voice is a loud whisper, 15 Jul 2008
Chinua Achebe's acclaimed novel starts out as a thoughtful invocation of the culture and values of the Igbo people in pre-colonial Nigeria at a time when advice is sought from oracles and medicine-men, justice despatched through blood feuds and human sacrifice, and where the manly virtues of the warrior remain the defining quality sought by all self-respecting men. Embarrassed by his weak father Okonkwo sets out to be become a clan leader through steely determination, hard work and plain bullying. A lot of good it does him, though. A fatal accident - not in any way his fault - results in flight from his clan and a humiliating seven year exile. On his return, the missionaries had arrived in his village and we all know what happened next: the end of civilisation as they knew it.
This is an important book inasmuch as it was one of the first authentic African voices to portray the effects of colonialism on a traditional African society, and it came at a time when the British Empire had run its course and was on the verge of disintegration. However, it is an immature work written in a style so concise as to appear almost light, and is not the masterwork that it is claimed to be despite its undoubted virtues of accuracy and honesty. The author - as I'm sure he would admit - was to compose better works.


Wonderful prose and an eye opener, 27 Jun 2008
This seminal work of modern African literature tells the story of tribal civilisation in Nigeria just at the point where the British first arrive. The central character Okonkwo is a proud and feared tribal warrior. The wrestling exploits of his youth are legend and established him as an alpha male in the region. He is also a breed apart from his fellow villagers. He is ruthless, hugely ambitious, hard working and acquisitive. Okonkwo's steady path to advancement in the village is cut short however when he is implicated in the death of a villager and sent in to exile for seven years. This is the falling apart of Okonkwo's world and he finds it very difficult to adapt to his new circumstances. But more than this, the civilisation that Okonkwo inhabits is about to fall apart, as it meets the first wave of British imperialism. The new colonial master is depicted dispassionately by Achebe, almost as if he is merely reporting on events - there is no overt judgement of the British. (When you consider Achebe's journalistic training and background this is less surprising). Indeed, though they are alien to each other, Okonkwo understands only too well that the brutal logic of the encroaching imperialist power dictates that might must prevail. As a bully and a strongman, it is the code that he has understood and followed all his life. We also see that many of the changes that the British bring are more readily welcomed than you would expect - religion and western education for example - and that people are lured to what is new and different. This novel depicts a complex tribal society - far more complex than the imperialist power would have understood or given it credit for. It is also a novel about change and adapting to it and the insignificance of the little man in the face of this change.

A most enchanting book, 30 Apr 2008
The story in this book takes place in the countryside of Nigeria during the reign of Queen Victoria. The central character - Okonkwo, is a man who despises his father and aspires to be the total opposite. He is ambitious and wishes to live in such a way that will lead to status and respect. In particular he wishes to be awarded a number of titles which could ultimately see him as the chief of the tribe. He shows very little outward love towards his family, especially towards his children, because he wants to make sure that none of become a wastrel like his father. Also he wants to appear to be tough so that his ambitions can be achieved.

As the story unfolds Okonkwo makes a number of mistakes - probably the most serious one where he accidently kills another and has to go into exile in a neighbouring village for 7 years. While he is away things go very badly for his home village. A white commuinity and their church start taking control of the region - very difficult to stop, because some of the villagers are members of the church.

When Okonkwo returns, and later attends a meeting to stop the power of the white colonizers, things continue to fall apart for both Okonkwo and the village as a whole. The ending is a surprise and is in a way depressing. Okonkwo acts rashly again decapitating one of the messengers sent by the while colonisers. He then disappears and is later found hanged - apparently suicide.

This is a wonderful book to read, not just because of the central theme, but also because of the details of African society, that people like myself are totally ignorant of. There are many different things that you can learn by reading this story.

Highly recommended

A disappointing read!, 20 Apr 2008
Achebe's feeble and disengaging characterisation is surpassed only by patronising simplicity. In attempting to depict the primal authenticity of pre-colonial African culture he has created a book that not only fails to do full justice to the tribe's struggle against Western imperialism but wholly relies on plot driven devices leaving in its wake a shallow and superficial tribute to one of history's most tragic struggles.

An acknowledged classic., 02 Apr 2008
For once the hype is deserved. This is a very rich book, the characters leaping out of the prose and connecting with the reader on a one-to-one basis. Fundamentally the book is about the clash of cultures and the dangers that this brings. An important message, given the current climate. Readers who enjoyed this book will also like: One Love Two Colours: The unlikely marriage of a Punk Rocker & his African Queen, by Margaret Oshindele. Another book that looks at culture clash, but from the modern perspectives of a Yoruba woman and an Englishman.