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Jan 08, 2011

Azra rated it:

حركت آوانگارد مترجم را در رعايت علامت‌گذاري‌ها مطابق نسخه‌ي انگليسي متن، نپسنديدم و در مجموع به نظرم ترجمه‌ي خوبي نيامد. همچنين خلاءهايي كه سانسور در داستان ايجاد كرده بود، حسرت خواندن كتاب را به زبان اصلي بر‌مي انگيخت و كوتاهي دست ما و بلنداي نخل را يادآوري مي كرد. جداي از اين، بسيار جاي تعجب است در كتابي كه تحت نظر نويسنده ترجمه شده و بنا بود همزمان با اصل كتاب در ايران رونمايي شود، غلط‌هاي فاحش ويراستاري و چاپي به چشم مي‌خورد.
اما حتي با وجود همه‌ي ايراداتي كه متوجه " سان ست پارك " More...

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 24, 2011

Jenny rated it:

[a rough english translation follows]

Un autre grand livre de Paul Auster...Un écrivain contemporain majeur. Je me sens "confirmée"par le fait de l'avoir su dés le premier livre lu. Merci à Nysen de l'avoir découvert et traduit en français alors qu'il était un tout jeune auteur. j'ai suivi pas à pas toute son oeuvre. Certains de ses ouvrages n'ont pas le même poids. Celui-ci est un des grands, avec Le livre des illusions, le voyage d'Anna blum, Tombouctou, Vertigo, Etc...Telle More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Dec 15, 2010

Marie rated it:

The one star is for the goodreads description "I didn't like it" as opposed to goodreads 2 stars of it was ok. It wasn't ok.. but I offered it 2 stars on the blog for "Some folks may like it". Diplomatic me.

This is one of those books that I had seen generating some buzz in bookish newsletters, and was surprised to learn that the author has quite a collection of published works. Before I started reading Sunset Park, I saw that there were four and five star ratings More...

7 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 05, 2011

Daniel G rated it:

Paul Auster hadn't bleeped on my radar until I cruised into his session at Adelaide Writers' Week a couple of years back. This is the first of his books which I've been sent for professional review. In short, he lives up to the blurb as "one of our greatest living writers."

Before I write my review, due late August, I plan to read as much of his backlist as I can before composing my response, but here's my initial thoughts: he writes with a maturity, smoothness and lack of lit More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 26, 2012

Ariadna73 rated it:

09-15-2011: I finished it and I can say that this is not the book that I had liked the most of this author's production. I think that it is like a circular trip that leads me nowhere. Howver, it is entertaining and very addictive and I reallly liked it. 09-14-2011: After a vacation-induced hiatus, I restarted the reading of this entertaining novel By now the man has involved himself in a lot of trouble because he fell inlove with this minor girl, and her sister is blackmailing him. He had to More...

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Aug 28, 2011

Kirstie rated it:

I'm a big fan of Paul Auster but I was somewhat disappointed by this one, especially by the ending which seemed implausible but not in a typical Auster way..I mean, this wasn't written with the same postmodern tinges but more with the notion of my generation's sense of floating by with a slightly more meaningful main character trying to overcome a major incident in his life that caused him to separate himself from his family for a period of years.

The strengths of this novel is that it More...

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Jul 01, 2011

Farzaneh rated it:

دوستاره به این کتاب میانگین چهارستاره برای آستر و یک ستاره برای مترجم است. داستان خوب، محکم، دیرگیر، به روز و متفاوتی بود از پل آستری که تا حالا شناخته ایم. داستانی که بیست سالی زودتر از روال معمول آستر به سراغ شخصیت های ماخولیایی افسرده و مستضعف! او می رود. مشکل اصلی ام با این کتاب ترجمه اش بود که گاهی گنگ، بدخوان و ناخوشایند می شد. مخصوصا زمانی که مترجم محترم برای جهش از خط قرمزها قلمشان را زیادی چرخانده اند و کاریکاتوری از اصل متن تحویل خواننده داده اند که دیگر آستر نیست. این شکست ها و گسست ه More...

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Jun 22, 2011

Beni rated it:

"His father wasn't one of those warmhearted buddy fathers who thought his son should be his best pal, he was simply a man who felt responsible for his wife and children, a quiet, even tempered man...."

Sunset Park’s main character is Miles Heller, who abandons his arty and successful New York family and ‘disappears’ to deal with his grief and guilt. He believes he was the cause of the death of his stepbrother in a car accident. Intertextuality kicks in here - The Great Gatsb More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 12, 2011

Fred rated it:

Reading a Paul Auster novel is something like listening to a well-orchestrated , multi-layered musical composition where certain melodies and motifs recur with substantial elaboration and variation. He is one of our very best writers and his newest, Sunset Park, like many of his books, reflects back to us a great deal about how we live today. It is "up-to-the-moment" current, the protagonist, Miles Heller, being employed by a South Florida realty company (for part of the novel) as a " More...

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Feb 11, 2011

Lisa rated it:

SPOILER ALERT: Is it just me, or did Paul Auster write two thirds of a book? He's created a more populous novel than usual, and manages to supply satisfying narrative arcs for the majority of those characters. I wonder if he found such atypical conventionality alarming, for he certainly shied away providing any such satisfying resolution for his main character, Miles.
Miles has spent his entire adult life running away from the fatal consequences of an impulsive shove during what ought to ha More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jan 24, 2011

Diane rated it:

Sunset Park is a different type of story, and in some ways it felt more like an intense character study. Its central character is Miles Heller, age 28, an intelligent, but directionless, Brown University dropout, who has been estranged from his family for a number of years. Miles has been harboring guilt over his part in an accident which took the life of his step-brother, Bobby, and which has torn his family apart. Miles father owns a struggling book publishing company in New York, his step-mo More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 20, 2011

Leah rated it:

This is my first Auster novel; I came to it without preconceptions. It was apparent to me early on that this would be a character-driven novel, which is another way of saying plot is inconsequential. I calibrated my expectations accordingly and enjoyed the series of character sketches, each inked boldly like sumi-e figures against a vague watercolor backdrop.

What's peculiar about it all is that SUNSET PARK is a novel that shouldn't work. It's almost entirely told instead of shown: acti More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 17, 2011

Mark rated it:

I’m a late-comer to Auster, having only read his last two, “Invisible” (I gave it five stars) and “Man in the Dark” (four). I enjoy his strong narrative style. In “Sunset Park,” the perspective is supreme omniscience. He writes from high above the characters, from the clouds looking down. The style is seductive, powerful and, as many others have acknowledged, smooth. I enjoyed the first half, wanting to see how these characters would get tangled up in the house where they are living as squat More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 10, 2011

Stephen rated it:

Another cracking read from one of the best writers in America. After a lean few years, it looks like Auster has got his mojo back. I thought this book and last year's 'Invisible' are as good as anything he has written.

What I really liked about this book was that it was fairly untypical of most of the author's work. There are no strange coincidences, no odd, quirky elements of chance or bizarre misfortunes, basically the major preoccupations of Austers work. Instead it's a more conve More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 04, 2011

Raymond rated it:

The book is a very accurate depiction of the social decay in contemporary American society. The young adult characters are faced with important decisions for their lives, but they are unable to make good decisions because nothing much of real value has been passed on to them from their parents. They end up squatting in an abandoned house.Their squatting is more than literal. It is also spiritual and emotional as their lives are constantly falling apart right before their eyes.
Its a sad sto More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 02, 2011

Meegan rated it:

I understand all of the praise for Paul Auster. Beautiful writing, well-drawn characters. Definitely told from a male perspective; I have a hard time falling for the romance of baseball history, and felt like Ellen's extreme sexual fascination was male fantasy rather than reality. But I found myself very compelled by the characters. I wanted to know how they would come through it all. Morris was definitely the most sympathetic character for me; a very decent man, torn between forgiving his son, More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Jan 01, 2011

Anne rated it:

I particularly love Paul Auster's writing. It draws me in and keeps me floating page by page, chapter by chapter. This book talks about many things that have importance in my life: baseball as a means to bond, the lure of Brooklyn, the love of literature and the meaning it gives to our lives. Miles Heller is a twenty-eight year-old who, according to his father, is stuck in the psyche of an 17-18 year-old. Haunted by the memory of his step-brother's death and convinced that it was all his fau More...

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Nov 25, 2010

Tosh rated it:

At the best times it is hard to put down a Paul Auster novel. He's a writer who writes for his readers. A goes to B and that will eventually come to C. My problem with his work is that I can picture the outline or map while reading his works.

The early Paul Auster I love, and its cool that he uses his home base Brooklyn as a guide or representation in his later novels, but then again, a lot of his work is like a math proposition. And although I don't put the book down, I could More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 22, 2010

Amy rated it:

Sunset Park
Author: Paul Auster
ISBN: 978-0805092868
Pages: 320
Release Date: November 2010
Publisher: Henry Holt and Company
Genre: Literary Fiction
Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Publisher: Sunset Park follows the hopes and fears of a cast of unforgettable characters brought together by the mysterious Miles Heller during the dark months of the 2008 economic collapse.
An enigmatic young man employed as a trash-out worker in southern Florida obsessively p More...

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Nov 13, 2010

Tony rated it:

Auster, Paul. SUNSET PARK. (2010). ****. Sunset Park is a lower-class neighborhood in Brooklyn that is rapidly going downhill. It is full of abandoned houses that remain unoccupied. Into one of these houses, the characters of this novel ultimately move in and become squatters. First we meet Miles Heller. Miles is a drop-out from college currently working in Florida as a trash-out employee for a realty firm. He has been wandering the country for over seven years now, working at a success More...

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Jan 01, 2011

Kirsten added it

I liked this book better when I started than when I finished it. On the fifth page I read, “[The Florida sun] is a Machiavellian sun in his opinion, a hypocritical sun, and the light it generates does not illuminate things but obscures them—blinding you with its constant, overbright effulgences, pounding on you with its blasts of vaporous humidity, destabilizing you with its miragelike reflections and shimmering waves of nothingness,” and I thought, oh I’m going to like this book (and not just b More...

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Nov 03, 2011

Scott rated it:

Sometimes if you read enough of a certain author, you tend to notice the author's trends, tendencies, and recurring themes. Sunset Park is clearly a Paul Auster book, especially in regards to the above mentioned, but I believe it also features the most engaging and well-rounded characters he's presented in quite some time.

Sunset Park features Miles Heller, a young man of once great potential who has since decided to coast through life with no ambition and little influence. Auster makes More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 25, 2011

Valerie rated it:

Sunset Park may be Auster's best book yet. His rich, precise descriptive powers and astonishingly gutsy but not overwrought use of metaphor are well worth savoring (Miles watches his mother play Winnie three times--the character who is stuck in his life watches his mostly-absent self-absorbed mother play a character buried in sand who needs someone to listen to her endlessly...; the house in sunset park, filled with characters stuck in some relation to untimely death and unappreciated talent, is More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 19, 2010

Jill rated it:

Paul Auster is one of my favorite writers; always able to paint his characters with taut, finely-detailed, yet propulsive brush strokes. And in Sunset Park, he does not disappoint.

This novel is less postmodern than his recent book Invisible. It focuses on debris: physical debris from trashed-out foreclosed homes in Florida that Miles Heller, a Brown University drop-out, rescues through his camera. And mental debris that Miles wrestles with after a spontaneous action on his part re More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 08, 2010

Kyle rated it:

It is fitting that a primary theme in Auster's oeuvre is coincidence and its implications, because I believe it to be no mere coincidence that I have found myself utterly infatuated with his work and especially with this novel. I was first introduced to Auster last year before "Invisible" came out. I saw a copy of the galley in the break room, never heard of the author at all nor had any knowledge on the novel, but was curiously interested for a reason I still cannot bring to mind. The More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Aug 19, 2010

Susan rated it:

I really liked this book and I'm not quite sure why.

The story is simple. A man in his twenties has walked away from his family and from participating in his own life until he falls in love with an underage girl. A disparate group of people, each with his or her own quirks and problems, illegally live together in an abandoned house in Sunset Park. People nursing their own wounds cause pain in others. Nothing mysterious or suspenseful or surprising. All is tied together by the the More...

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Jan 19, 2012

Mary rated it:

Paul Auster is a wonderful writer. This novel revolves around Miles Heller. When he is 16, Miles and his stepbrother Bobby are arguing, and Miles shoves Bobby down on to a road. Bobby is run over by a car and killed. Miles doesn't tell anyone what really happened.

This novel is Miles' journey to deal with his the aftermath of his angry shove. From the central character of Miles, readers are introduced to other characters who are dealing with their own difficulities in life. Miles' frien More...

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Sep 09, 2011

Belen added it

No sé bien qué escribir. Vayamos por partes. Lo he leído muy rápido y me estaba gustando muchísimo. Ceo que a la mitad del libro era mi favorito de Auster. Además había sido advertida y había visto previamente la películas Los Mejores Años de Nuestra Vida, así que disfruté enormemente todo lo que comenta de la pelo y mi felicidad ya fue máxima cuando me aclaró alguna cosa que no había pillado como lo de que saque dinero del bolsillo el protagonista cuando despierta en la cama de una mujer que no More...

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Dec 09, 2010

Bookmarks Magazine rated it:

Paul Auster, a novelist best known for his metafiction and postmodern experimentation, has taken a slightly different tack with this captivating, playfully odd contemporary novel. An accomplished storyteller with a special talent for unearthing the tragic in the everyday, Auster has created a world in Sunset Park that is not so much bleak as it is "just possessed of a wide-eyed understanding of consequence" (Los Angeles Times). Though Entertainment Weekly believed that Auster's shiftin More...

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Oct 10, 2010

Kasa rated it:

Auster populates his books with Brooklynites, for the most part. For me he has become the chronicler of that Borough, bringing it immediately to life. You stand behind them in the delis, pass them on the streets, see them in cafes. These are real New Yorkers, real inhabitants of a real place, not the idealized performers on the stage of the iconic City or nostalgic creations of another favorite New Yorker, Pete Hammill. These are character studies of people living actual life. Although thes More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

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