[ book tip by Tunde Eugenia Haulik ] This is another wonderful book by Auster. And what’s more, it is EXCITING. After having read a lot of serious stuff, Brooklyn Follies takes off with a slow and sad start. An elderly man moves to Brooklyn to die. After being persuaded by his daughter to start doing something with all the time that he has, he decides to write a book about human follies. Not about the great and mighty deeds, not about successful lives, but about, small and embarrassing happenings of everyday people.

As the narrator says: 'I was planning to set down…an account of every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act that I had committed during my long and checkered career as a man.' (p.5)

Slowly the focus ceases to be on an old and lonely man and his often unsuccessful attempts at writing and is more on a strange adventure of three people: the narrator, his nephew Tom and an antique bookstore owner, Harry. As these three people meet, slowly a story of human mistakes and weaknesses unfolds. The past of Harry comes back to haunt him, Tom has yet to decide that he wants a future, and the narrator 'Uncle Nat' has yet to live a life before he dies.

This is a novel worth reading; it is sad and funny and sometimes violent, a novel about marred human relationships that can still be mended, and about ridiculous and pointless lives that can still be loved.

[ book info ] Auster, Paul: The Brooklyn Follies. Faber and Faber, London, 2006 . ISBN: 9780571224982.