Timbuktu
Paul Auster is one of my favourite authors, and so even when I don’t think one of his books is as good (read engaging, moving, strange ) as another, I find it hard to criticise. That’s okay – I am a reader rather than a professional reviewer, and I can just voice what I understood about the book and hint at some dissatisfaction, with sending the dog to the kennel without supper. The starting point is that this is a story about a man and a dog. At first, it is more about the man, a dysfunctional Brooklyn poet who has taken a Santa Claus vow to be helpful to others. We wonder - along with our narrator, Mr Bones – whether Willy G Christmas will survive long enough to meet his old teacher and mentor, Bea Swanson, and what it will mean if he does. There is some urgency here, since ‘the smell of death had settled upon Willy G Christmas, and as surely as the sun was a lamp in the clouds that went off and on every day, the end was drawing near’. I’m not sure about other readers, but I t