Paul Auster: Man in the Dark
Dear Reader,
I just woke up from a book that I loved. How to tell you what I loved about it? How to share the warmth in my chest, the glow, the tears? I know that Man in the Dark is great, that it will stay with me. What makes it great?
Paul Auster tells the story of a single night. But how many stories fit into a night! There is the story that an old man tells himself in the dark because he can't sleep. A dystopian war story full of tragedy and suspense, it kept me turning page after page. Now and then the old man interrupts his story. Thoughts interrupt him: about his daughter Miriam and his granddaughter Katya. Katya is grieving the death of her boyfriend, her grandfather spends days watching movies with her to numb the memories.
There are other stories the old man thinks about, each of them short and heartrending. All the while, his invented war story pulls me along. The book isn't over when it ends. Katya enters the dark room. She can't sleep, either. She gets her grandfather to tell her another story: about his deceased wife. Romantic relief. The lovestory with its highs and lows prepares us for the final tragedy: the story of the boyfriend's death.
And then, morning. And then, closing the book and standing up from the sofa as if it were morning after a night of insomnia.
Dear Reader, I am marvelling at how real it felt: how I seem to know them all now, the old man and his wife, his granddaughter and her dead boyfriend, his imaginary characters. How deeply I connected to somebody so different from myself. Escapism and reality, suspense and deep truths, Paul Auster wove it all into a dense, but light book on less than 200 pages.
What to read after such a book? Comedy, perhaps. Something completely different, because nothing similar could compare.
Yours sincerely
Christina Widmann de Fran
Man in the Dark by Paul Auster
published in 2008
ISBN: 9780571240760
Available on Amazon.co.uk.
This book arrived in my monthly pack from Libreando Club, a subscription of used books handpicked for each reader.
