In terms of American writers, Auster stands up there being so unique, a writer one must read at least once. He’s remarkably talented here and his originality continues to impress me.Leviathan literally means the biggest of its kind, and was also a sea monster from the Old Testament. Knowing such things illuminates Auster’s reasoning behind titling his book as such.In this tale, Peter Aaron’s friend, Ben Sachs-a once-promising author-accidentally blows himself up along a rural road using a homema...

That's my kind of book! Beautifully given story of a man's pursuit of identity. Loved it more than I could ever love The New York Trilogy or Invisible (these are the only Paul Auster books I have read)...perhaps, it has to do with the fact that I read the English edition...perhaps, he is one of those writers I enjoy reading in English, but never in Greek!

Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of the road in northern Wisconsin. There were not witnesses, but it appears that he was sitting on the grass next to his parked car when the bomb he was building accidentally went off....The day after the explosion, the wire services ran a brief article about the case. It was one of those cryptic, two-paragraph stories they bury in the middle of the paper, but I happened to catch it in The New York Times while I was eating lunch that afternoon. Alm...

A great writer grappling with an ambitious subject, masterfully treated.First of all, a perfect construction, upside down thriller which gives the identity of the dead man and goes back to his story told by his best friend who leads the investigation among the key characters, especially women who were important to them both, doubles too. The narrator recounts with thoroughness and depth a few years of life in turmoil in this little world of the American intelligentsia of the Reagan years and the...

Video reviewA veritable dream if you are a fan of mysterious first-person narratives about Terrible Things that Must Be Told before Something Bad Happens. You know - Call of Cthulhu to The Name of the Rose. Not that the plot is pointless - it is thrilling, and peopled with interesting characters - but this is truly more for Forbidden Book and metafictional kids.

Leviathan focuses on the interior world of a writer, Benjamin Sachs, as told by his best friend Peter Aaron (also a writer). The tale is dark, twisty and fascinating. I was in the mood for a dose of Auster and the novel delivered.

Had to read it for a book club I go, but in all honesty, I couldn't get into the book. Slow, tedious, uninteresting. Didn't enjoy the prose or the characters.Ended up flipping pages and finally stoppes reading almost at half the book.Definitely, not for me.

"Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in Wisconsin,"thus starts the gripping tale of Benjamin Sachs. There are books that make you cry, ones that make you smile and sometimes laugh, some make you think and a few that refuse to leave your mind. Then there are those rare ones that leave you with a haunting , disturbing feeling that is beyond any definition. And this is one of those rare ones.As soon as author Paul Aaron catches the news item in The New York Times, he is absolu...

Leviathan, Paul Auster Leviathan is American writer Paul Auster’s seventh novel, published by Viking Press in 1992. The novel follows the life and crimes of a man who decides to take action over words to deliver his message to the world, as told by his estranged best friend. The novel opens like a detective story as the narrator begins, Six days ago, a man blew himself up by the side of a road in northern Wisconsin. There were no witnesses, but it appears that he was sitting on the grass next to...

A NICE NIGHT'S ENTERTAINMENT ON THE FOURTH OF JULY:Fireworks Over BrooklynWe're at a party in a modern bohemian fourth floor apartment in Brooklyn. The guests include publishers, writers, artists, film-makers, musicians and various minders, acolytes and drummers disguised as waiters. It’s July 4, 1981 (or is it 2003 or 2012 or all three, I don't know, the script doesn't say), barely twenty minutes before the fireworks are due to begin.LYDIA DAVIS (who has just arrived, it’s her second party of t...

It took me a while to figure out what I felt towards to this book or rather a way to articulate it into some sort of coherent review. I should start by saying that Auster changed a lot of my perspectives throughout this book (nah, not revolutionary stuff). Auster delves into these characters so deeply and invests in their habits, attitudes, feelings so much we can't help but forget that it is but a work of fiction but there was so much detail paid to these characters (and what beautiful characte...

A Novel Whose Real Subject is Its Author's Anxiety About Losing Our AttentionThis is, by most people's accounts, a minor novel of Auster's, and so it may be a poor choice to raise the question of what drives the work, as opposed to what happens when the writing succeeds. This book has a kind of unremitting literalism in its narrative. In a nearly blank, neutral voice, the narrator tells us dozens of dates, places, and names; it's justified by the notion that this is a book written at speed in or...

For me the tale did not merit the lengthy narrative, the book within the book seemed contrived and interfered with the tension. I felt it was too much blathering and was in need of editing. Perhaps it's a case of not being able to latch on to either of the main male characters as sympathetic or interesting. The female protagonists started out as more captivating particularly since I'd seen museum exhibits of Sophie Calle and immediately recognized her in Maria but they were reduced to pretty muc...

WOW! WOW! WOW! No wonder Siri married him. I really think serious stalking in Brooklyn is a possibility my next trip to New York. I utterly ADORED this book. Complete satisfaction. It is not a very long book but it is incredibly dense and the narrative moves along at a good clip. This is the fourth Paul Auster I have read this year and none have been the same. BUT BUT I strongly suspect that this may not be for everyone. It is almost review proof because you really can't say much about the plot....

Auster evidently likes his disturbed writer protagonists (both the narrator and his subject in this case), it seems to fit the obsessive, philosophical characters he likes to present. However, he offered lots of opinions on the characters as a way of forcing a full image of them, rather than some more 'show not tell'...Also, some of their features he seemed keen emphasise contradicted each other and took away from the character as a whole.The actual contents of the plot often jumped around and s...

I love Auster, and "The New York Trilogy" is probably up there in my top ten books. But "Leviathan" left me deeply unsatisfied. Overall, the structure did not work for me, and while some of the themes and tropes are vintage Auster this time they didn't coalesce. There was a lot in here, as Sachs trashes one part of his life after another in some search of who-knows-what (success? identity? self-respect?) that just felt repetitive and monotonous. It's not that Sachs is unlikable, but something wo...

If you already like Paul Auster, you will definitely enjoy Leviathan, and if you dislike him or have a negative impression of his work, it's unlikely to be the book that will change your mind. This is, in many, many ways, textbook Auster. The author is a self-insert named Peter Aaron, a New-York based writer. The basic set-up isn't too different from that of Invisible: a man does or suffers a terrible thing, and the story consists of his friend, the narrator, looking back on the history of their...

181021: well. i have read 17 books by auster, over the years (decades...), ranging widely in appreciation from great joy to good to ok, so i have decided to do this kind of (meta? mega?) review of what are his apparent concerns, who are his usual characters, his usual world, his usual interpersonal relationships, how the plot will be driven or informed by coincidence, how these are particularly literary works that yes you can read twice or more...1) in silence, aside from occasional background h...

more like a 2.5more often than not, if i want to give a book less than 4 stars, I shouldn't be rating it because I'm not the intended audience - it's why I didn't rate the handmaid's tale, and why I put many other books down that i won't post about; there's no point - why would you want to read about my opinion if i don't enjoy the very essence of a book? but i'm pretty sure i'm the intended audience for this - it's literary crime with a stunning concept. A man blows himself up, and his best fri...

I think a good rubric for determining how much you enjoy a novel should be assessed after you close the book. I found this readable, but as soon as I put it down, I didn't give fuckall about the any of the characters. In fact some of them perturbed me bordering on disgust. And not in a slimy, well written Patrick Bateman sort of way either. I just really didn't care.And honestly, how can you write a book about random events and the strange interconnectivity of our lives and introduce every scene...