Having finished Umberto Eco`s excellent Baudolino, I began reading Paul Auster`s most recent novel, The Book of Illusions….It was a most pleasant surprise, Paul Auster has become established as a storyteller of brilliance..the tabloids have been full of praise..I was becoming suspicious, was this “hype”. I have to admit I waited to pick up this book until it had hit the paperback format….

David Zimmer, Professor of Litterature at Vermont College, age 39, enters into the most deciding crisis of his life. His anchor of identity and confidence, belief is unrooted as his family plummets down from the sky in a planecrash. Only memories, too confounding and painful, remains… by a coincidence, he discovers the work of Hector Mann, a struggling late 1920`s silent movie director/actor – and the comic and dramatic universe of his films. As a work of consolation and obsession, Zimmer begins to track down the director`s lost movies and writes a book about them….a decision not without consequences.

The book has style, a well defined personae dramatis and the eloquence and timing that Paul Auster is famous for.. It gave back a lot for the little time and effort I invested in reading it.