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Nov 23, 2009

Barry rated it:

11/28
pp 248: "He was an odd, unpleasant man... with... an unnerving revulsion against small talk of any kind." I like this guy!

This ended up being excellent. i mean, it began that way too but i'd heard it was sub-par and I'd say it's neck and neck w/ Oracle Night in the Top 5. I loved every character and the meandering narrative and the somber elegiac tone Auster's been into since Book of Illusions. A great read, and if it's the last new Auster I get to read then this More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Aug 02, 2008

Terri rated it:

I know that there have been mixed reviews of this book. I picked it up in the bargain bin and then looked it up on Amazon. Some loved it. Some hated it, saying that their beloved writer had been abducted by aliens and forced to write this book by money grubbing editors. They claimed that there was no plot, nothing happened and I looked at the cheesy cover with trepidation thinking that I had spent some hard earned cash on what would amount to a dust collector and could've spent it on umm, a latt More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 09, 2007

Kelly rated it:

Nathan Glass, a retired life-insurance salesman diagnosed with lung cancer, moves out to Brooklyn to die. Throughout the course of the novel, he reunites with his nephew, becomes friends with a charismatic criminal-minded bookstore owner, and receives an unexpected visitor. The title stems from a series of notes Glass is putting together on life's mishaps, eventually to be formed into The Book of Human Folly. It's a touching book with the types of well fleshed-out, "I know that guy" ty More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 18, 2007

Kitty-Wu rated it:

Nathan Glass ha sobrevivido a un cáncer de pulmón y a un divorcio después de treinta y tres años de matrimonio, y ha vuelto a Brooklyn, el lugar donde nació y pasó su infancia. Quiere vivir allí lo que le queda de su «ridícula vida». Hasta que enfermó era un próspero vendedor de seguros; ahora que ya no tiene que ganarse la vida, piensa escribir El libro de las locuras de los hombres. Contará todo lo que pasa a su alrededor, todo lo que le ocurre y lo que se le ocurre, y hasta algunas de l More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Dec 19, 2007

John rated it:

Always a creative, suspenseful story teller, but this one has some pretty bad (but easily avoided) aspects:

plotwise:

no reason to talk about Bush or religion (at least in the way it was mentioned); seemed strained and cliche (along with cliches of Vermont, Latino women who work at diners, and gay men, drugs leading to porn and then religion, etc etc).

no reason to have Rory suck off the priest near the end, which I have to admit made me feel actually disguste More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 26, 2008

Elizabeth added it

Disappointing. Fell apart when I started to have the suspicion that Auster's narrator was one of those avuncular ciphers, the soulful philosopher king, able to stand outside everyone else's problems, a lover of all women, shopper of impeccable taste, good with children and dogs, devoid of all complications (such as hair in the sink or a penchant for scooping up peanut butter with two fingers) beyond a failed marriage and cancer in remission. Neither of which messy, presumably lively affair war More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 09, 2012

Kevin rated it:

Paul Auster's good-natured take on fate, coincidence, making plans... once again the author takes on his set of themes and makes them enjoyable, simple to grasp. This simplicity is also, once again, a downfall; by ending the narrative action on such a flimsy, predictable note Auster exceeds his grasp and pumps the story two paragraphs past the point of art. The implications of our protagonist's decision would have been far-reaching, had a more universal logic had the defining event of the 00s More...

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Aug 06, 2011

Matthew added it

When Nathan Glass begins his project entitled The Book of Human Folly, a chronicle of his unique mishaps, misunderstandings, foibles and foolishness, he unwittingly begins the process of authoring his own true existence. This effort of the narrative constitution of a Self leads eventually to The Hotel Existence, outside Burlington, Vermont. As Nathan describes it, echoing Thoreau, "A place to live on your own terms." It represents (as Poe clearly did in Lander's Cottage and A Philos More...

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Jan 26, 2009

Josh rated it:

"I've always had a soft spot for rascals," I said. "They might not make the most reliable friends, but think how drab life would be without them."

"I'm not sure Harry's a rascal anymore," Tom answered. "he's too full of regret."

"Once a rascal, always a rascal. People never change."

"A matter of opinion. I say they can."

"You never worked in the insurance business. The passion for deceit More...

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Nov 24, 2008

Travis rated it:

This is perhaps Auster's most accessible novel but all his hallmarks are there. I thought this was an enjoyable, charming read. The characters were well-drawn and believable for the most part. The one exception being the Christian zealot who is painted so broadly it's almost cartoonish. I don't hold this against Auster or the rest of the book. Many authors seem to have problems depicting conservative Christians without turning them into either demons or cartoons. At any rate, it's a fantast...mo More...

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Oct 01, 2011

Talia rated it:

This is a novel in which the subtext is by far more interesting than the narration appearing on the page. And Auster seems to have worked hard to weave this subtext.

The retired, recently divorced Nat becomes reacquainted with his nephew, Tom, formerly an English professor who's failed to complete his Ph.D. Tom says, "Poe was artifice and the gloom of midnight chambers. Thoreau was simplicity and the radiance of the outdoors." In these words Auster captures the two main cha More...

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Sep 12, 2011

Judy rated it:

This was one lousy book. Now I've never read this guy before but this book had all the ingredients of good story.Here:
The narrator starts off miserable- which is great.
He's neurotic - which is also great.
His family is dysfunctional- which is marvelous.
His ex wife hates him.Wonderful.
He hates her.
Wonderful again.
And here he is in Brooklyn- Perfect. We're cooking.
So what went wrong?
Everything.
The book just sunk from there.
In fact if it hadn' More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Aug 27, 2011

Nancy rated it:

I want to say upfront: I enjoyed this. I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. The story is clever, engaging, entertaining. I didn't mean to read the end first, but I did, because I had to KNOW. The Brooklyn Follies is narrated by Nathan, a recently divorced cancer survivor who has come to Brooklyn to die (or at least, to write a book about Great Follies He Has Known.) Lucky for him, before he can sink into utter despair, he runs into his nephew Tom, an unhappy ex-academic who is now More...

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Feb 20, 2011

Andypants rated it:

What Auster managed to do in this book that impressed me most of all was to write a book in the first person narrative that was believable. The setup is that an intelligent but abrasive old man has recently divorced and is going back to Brooklyn where he was born, for no particular reason except to get away from the wreck of his marriage, and to mope about his cancer.

It's a great setup for a first person narrative, since we the readers get to meet every character and get their backgr More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 30, 2010

Donnie rated it:

I'd like to give this book 4.5 stars, but goodreads.com fails to strive for precision.

I really, really, really enjoyed this book. The voice and tone of it is so warm and an inviting. I loved every character in the book, not so much for their personalities, but rather that Auster portrays each one with so much sensitivity and kindness. There is no judgement or scorn in his approach to these people, despite their "follies."

There isn't much of a "story" More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 18, 2010

Aaron rated it:

The narrator of Brooklyn Follies, an ex-insurance salesman named Nathan Glass, is compiling a book of follies. He gives the example of a young Jewish boy whose prescient German parents ship him to America in the early 1930s. After the war, the boy, now a young doctor in New York, learns that by some miracle, his mother, who he has not seen since he left Europe, has survived the Holocaust. He arranges for her to fly to New York, the day arrives, but before he can pick her up from the airport, he More...

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Jun 28, 2010

Taylor Kate rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Nov 14, 2009

Sara rated it:

This was a very entertaining and interesting book with many twists in it. The book was full of irony because so many unexpected things happened. Paul Auster incorporated many different styles and techniques of writing in his novel such as a scene with a long monologue to a chapter that was structured like a skit.

This book told a story of each character, each story telling a truth about life. For example, one of the character was named Tom. Tom was a academically successful in schoo More...

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Oct 24, 2009

Elizabeth rated it:

I confess I waited a long time to pick this up because Paul Auster was getting hyped up one side and down the other and I was fed up with it. My loss, it seems, as this was very good, the kind of book where I liked it more with every page. It's a character-driven novel about a somewhat unlikely assortment of people who are thrown together, and spends most of its time looking at how their various backgrounds impact how they develop relationships (all sorts) with each other. The characters were ma More...

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Sep 05, 2009

Stephanie rated it:

One of the numerous minor characters that flit in and out of The Brooklyn Follies is one James Joyce -- not the writer, but a Foley walker, a person who makes sound effects for movies. His job isn't all aural pyrotechnics, though: he is described as working on minutia, such as "turning the page of a book, or opening a box of crackers".

Similarly, Paul Auster textures his latest novel with little details that seem insignificant in themselves. When weaved into the narrative, h More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 02, 2009

David rated it:

Plot spoiler included. The book was recommended by friends as a good, if not earth-shattering, read and the book lived up to its endorsements. The back of the book suggests that it is a redemption story: I'm not so sure. It is a contemplation of folly, but not say, of human bondage, a reflection on loss, death and old age (but not of the genre recently utilized by Roth and others), and a contemplation of religion, America, being, writing, and, in short, everything that makes up the great A More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 21, 2010

Joffy rated it:

"Reading was my escape and my confort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head."
Decisamente colpito in maniera positiva! Una storia a volte poetica ("tears [...] salty ephemera, shining globules that momentarily darken and then vanish into the dust"), a volte tremendamente divertente, a volte cruda, a volte sentimentale. Un protagonist More...

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Feb 16, 2009

Nelson rated it:

This was my first time reading Auster, and from reading reviews of some of his other works, I wonder if I should have started with something else. Having said that, I enjoyed it, overall. It was a good story, all told, and I thought most of the characters were well-developed, if a bit archetypal.

I guess a couple of qualms I had were the descriptions of Bush/religion. With the benefit of the author's hindsight, it almost seems that Tom was a bit too dead-on about what a Bush pres More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Nov 15, 2009

Jessica Ng rated it:

This book was actually worth reading. It is full of follies, which are foolish stories. It talked about the life of Nathan and how he first moved to Brooklyn so he could die. In Brooklyn, a series of events happened where the book owner his newphew, Tom worked for added some spice to his life. Harry, the bookstore owner had a checkered past where he and his partner made false paintings and sold them. He "snitched" on his partner to recieve a shorter sentence. He moved to Brooklyn for a More...

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Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

Auster's previous fiction, from Moon Palace to The Book of Illusions, earned him the reputation as a modern experimentalist. At first glance, Brooklyn Follies appears to break from this categorization. In fact, notes the San Francisco Chronicle, the novel "is a classical work of American literature in the most traditional 19th century meaning of the phrase." Bound by the idea of human connection, coincidence, and possibility, Brooklyn Follies features flawed but mostly believable chara

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Oct 09, 2007

Billy rated it:

This was alright; coming off Don DeLillo it wasn't too annoying to have characters who are as banal and as not prone to self-examination as real people are. This book is all about the story--no grand themes, no florid or interesting language. Well, I suppose there is some grand theme about how innocent everyone's ordinary lives were before 9/11. And if you like reading about Park Slope specifics, this is definitely for you.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Mar 19, 2010

Gini rated it:

The very last two paragraphs of the book saved it for me. I know Paul Auster is a beloved author, and word for word as he strings together his sentences he's a very good writer, but until the end, this story failed to garb me, and the characters rang a little false. I could never accept the idea of the erudite retired life insurance salesman. The year we meet him he has come out of a bad marriage, an unhappy relationship with his daugher and a bout with cancer. Througout the story he is clever More...

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Jul 30, 2009

Carrie rated it:

I wanted so much to like this book and, in turn, Paul Auster. I will not give up on Auster, but this book has not endeared him to me.

I have so many problems with the plot of this book. There is absolutely no reason for the Vermont trip that supposedly changes everyone lives forever. None. Nathan gives no reasons for his not wanting to take Lucy in, other than he just can't.

If, in the end, all Nathan's insurance friend needs is the name of someone who once had a phone num More...

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Jan 23, 2012

Lil rated it:

After seeing Paul Auster at the Key West Literary Seminar, I began reading PA's and Siri's books. I started with Oracle Nights and continued with The Brooklyn Follies and have recommended both these books to dozens of people who loved them. One day, not sure why, I began craving Paul Auster books the way a Vancouverite craves sunshine. I hunted them down in used bookstores, libraries, and even new copies until I had read many. I can follow the stories within stories within stories (Oracle Ni More...

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Jul 17, 2007

Yulia rated it:

One of his less pretentious and more successful efforts. He should try embracing his own voice and stop lecturing his readers or using gimmicky footnotes. I always want to know what he's up t, but then regret it as soon as I'm suckered into buying a new book of his. Hopefully age will make him less "ambitious" and crave less an affiliation with Beckett and Borges.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)