Imagine you were dying, alone, and looking for a quiet place to spend the rest of your days. Where would you choose? A mountain lodge in the Rockies? A quaint cottage in New England?
Nathan Glass chose Brooklyn. And so begins Paul Auster's novel The Brooklyn Follies, a story about life'schanging landscape—its triumphs and pitfalls, its unforeseen forks in the road and, most of all, its second chances.
Following a lung cancer diagnosis and a divorce, Glass, the book's narrator, is reborn after he returns to the New York borough that was his home for the first three years of his life.
In the beginning, his new life is peaceful and uneventful. He strolls the old and eccentric streets of Park Slope, routinely eats lunch in his favorite diner and dedicates time to describing autobiographical foibles, idiocies and blunders for his debut book project and hobby-of-the-moment, The Book of Human Folly. But when Glass arbitrarily runs into his estranged nephew, his life transforms and Auster's 10th novel pulls you in.
Glass begins to reconnect with a motley crew of characters: an ex-con bookstore owner, his estranged and troubled niece, the neighborhood's "Beautiful Perfect Mother," an HIV-positive drag queen. All have something in common—they are, in one way or another, starting over. Some are already established in Brooklyn, others funnel in to jump-start their lives. Brooklyn becomes the epicenter of new beginnings.
The characters also share a connection to Glass' nephew, Tom Wood. While Glass has the strongest presence in the book, the meek and directionless Wood is the hero.
Much of the book is dedicated to the back stories of the characters, but the exchanges between the well-read uncle-nephew team are the heart of the novel. In dialogue between the two, Wood repeatedly reveals his disheartened view of life brought on by his own failures and the woes of the world. His biggest dream is to one day escape reality, a vision he tries to explain by retelling a Franz Kafka story in which the author forges letters from a lost doll to a heartbroken little girl:
"She has the story, and when a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear."
But Wood cannot escape the unexpected circumstances that interrupt everyone's lives. Through the aptly named Glass, we see his broken nephew transform, physically and emotionally, from someone who passively wishes to escape life into someone actively living it. His life is redirected and molded by the people around him, by random events ... by Destiny.
"Like Kafka's doll, he thought he was simply looking for a change of scenery, but because he left one road and took another, Fortune unexpectedly reached out her arms to him and carried our boy into a different world."
The coincidences that take place are often far-fetched, but Auster's characters are so vivid, flawed, human and, above all, likable, it's hard not to take the leap and accept the ridiculous. Plus, hell, its fiction.
Known for dark and irony-filled novels, Auster departs from his signature style in The Brooklyn Follies. His prose is playful, outwardly comical and inflated, yet at times tranquil. Even in its darkest moments, the book strikes a sanguine tone, always hinting at the possibility of redemption.
A Brooklynite, Auster's love and deep knowledge of the area fill the pages. Brooklyn provides an engaging backdrop for the novel, but the story could be set anywhere. The idea that unpredictable, Fortune can stick its hand in at any moment is not a concept confined by physical boundaries. Nor is the notion that people can find fulfillment on the second or third go-around.
The message is preached until the very end. As Glass reflects on the importance of the lives of everyday people and revels in his latest triumph, a shattering event that will without doubt change his life and the life of a nation unknowingly looms ahead of him and drives home the central theme of the story.
"How rapidly the world shifts around us; how rapidly one problem is replaced by another, with scarcely a moment to bask in our victories."
But as dark as the impending catastrophe is, the book doesn't leave us in a state of despair, but rather optimistic that there will once again be hope for a new beginning.
"Hope for cats and dogs. Hope for trees and flowers. Hope for America. Hope for England. Hope for the world."
Brooklyn Follies
by Paul Auster
Henry Holt and Co., $24