The Brooklyn Follies

By: Paul Auster

Narrated by: Paul Auster

Nathan Glass has come to Brooklyn to die. Divorced, estranged from his only daughter, the retired life insurance salesman seeks only solitude and anonymity. Then Nathan finds his long-lost nephew, Tom Wood, working in a local bookstore, a far cry from the brilliant academic career he'd begun when Nathan saw him last. Tom's boss is the charismatic Harry Brightman, whom fate has also brought to the "ancient kingdom of Brooklyn, New York". Through Tom and Harry, Nathan's world gradually broadens to include a new set of acquaintances, not to mention a stray relative or two, and leads him to a reckoning with his past.

Among the many twists in the delicious plot are a scam involving a forgery of the first page of The Scarlet Letter, a disturbing revelation that takes place in a sperm bank, and an impossible, utopian dream of a rural refuge. Meanwhile, the wry and acerbic Nathan has undertaken something he calls The Book of Human Folly, in which he proposes "to set down in the simplest, clearest language possible an account of every blunder, every pratfall, every embarrassment, every idiocy, every foible, and every inane act I had committed during my long and checkered career as a man". But life takes over instead, and Nathan's despair is swept away as he finds himself more and more implicated in the joys and sorrows of others.

The Brooklyn Follies is Paul Auster's warmest, most exuberant novel, a moving and unforgettable hymn to the glories and mysteries of ordinary human life.

©2005 Paul Auster (P)2005 HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Auster has written a sublime soap opera about the ways in which people abandon and save one another. He captures a historical moment, our twisted America, and he offers a message of hope. Love will save us. We will save each other. Auster employs tough-guy talk and funny, believable stories of folly in his search for wisdom and goodness." ( The Boston Globe)

"Probably the first authentic attempt to deal with the post--September 11 world . . . It is a multilayered tapestry, with whimsical chapter headings and Dickensian depth." ( San Francisco Chronicle)

"A bighearted, life-affirming, tenderly comic yarn." ( The Washington Post)

Redemption

I heard the voice of Nathan Glass as Paul Auster read his own words. Cannot imagine a more perfect tone. Pre 9/11 Brooklyn and indeed the USA is captured by Mr. Auster as he finds redemption from a life looking at his own naval. There is life and there is living. Nathan Glass lived but soon after moving to Brooklyn and reuniting with his beloved nephew he starts living again and listening to this story we rejoice in his great good fortune. There is a wild mix of characters well described and rounded out. We meet several real scoundrals, some strong women and a smart and sometimes smart ass little girl named Lucy who gives everyone a second chance. If you are looking for wild action and mystery this book is not for you. If you are anywhere right of moderate the politics in the book will turn you off. Nathan and crew are decidedly Democrat. However, if you are in the mood for a book in which things turn out all right this is for you. 9/11 happens just as the book ends. Good job Mr. Auster. Write more.

Awesome listen!!!

I listen to books while walking; this morning I walked an extra mile, just to hang in with uncle Nate until his last words had been spoken.

Loved this

I’ve enjoyed other books by Paul Auster and this is the first one I’ve listened to. He wraps a captivating story into a bigger message about life. Thoroughly enjoyed it and was sad to finish.

Uneven but worth listening to

I will start off by saying I am a huge Auster fan. This book has quite a few highs but also be prepared for just some out of left field randomness. The ending is a bit meh but I still would recommend reading this.

Awesome

Fabulous narrative and gets you submerged into a clever, warm and unexpected turn of events

The greatest modern American story teller never lets us down.

As with all of Auster’s novels while the plot is simple the characters have complicated lives and Auster develops them in ways which allow the reader to associate with them.

a beautiful week

I have long loved Auster's books, but now I know that I have to listen to them, not just read them. I agree that 5 stars are not enough -- it has been completely satisfying listening to this wonderful book. The pacing provided frequent, unpredictable surprises. The reflections of Nathan on everything around and inside him are fresh, certainly not detached, and they moved me frequently. I was uneasy sometimes about everything moving to too many happy endings, but the unease was unwarranted. I'll certainly listen to this one more than once.

Overall Entertaining

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The Brooklyn Follies has a great deal of charm. The characters are interesting and their lives are brought to life with insight and a lot of detail. There are many eccentrics and appealing fools, and Auster has tremendous affection for all of them. This reader did, too. As suggested by the title, it's more of a picaresque or pastiche than a novel. Lives randomly or coincidentally colliding. Many sections of the book involve one character telling his story to the narrator. While the stories are good, it pulls you away from the narrator himself and his emotional journey. The fact that things end well for these likable characters is welcome, but it didn't feel entirely earned. The book rushes headlong toward a conclusion in the last half hour or so, with a let's-wrap-it-up quality. The prose is clean, straightforward, and effective. Overall, I was happy to have listened but not wildly enthusiastic.

What about Paul Auster’s performance did you like?

While Auster doesn't create specific voices and intonations for his characters as the best readers do, he has a wonderfully interesting and rich voice. He brought the book to life and I enjoyed his reading.

An Aging Rocker Who Still Hits the Right Notes

Any additional comments?

I’m thinking: if Philip Roth is the Bob Dylan of literature, then maybe Paul Auster is Lou Reed. There’s a similar slight age difference, and the fact that both pairs are Jewish, with the older ones much more upfront about it. Then there’s the idea that Roth and Dylan both seemed intent on telling stories that resonated across the country, while Auster and Reed embraced New York City, both, in their way, becoming regional writers who happened to be in the cultural capital.

I haven’t always liked what I’ve read of Auster. I enjoyed Mr. Vertigo, but the New York Trilogy seemed cold and almost mechanical to me. I could say the same of Lou Reed; I love the Velvet Underground stuff, but find his solo work uneven – never because it’s inept but sometimes because it seemed more committed to the experiment than to the result.

I think the late Lou Reed, as much in his interviews as his music, became someone who was the best of his middle work, someone who could stand on his history of experimentation and make himself accessible, someone whose credibility let him talk more nakedly about being human than most people could get away with.

The Brooklyn Follies seems to me a similar sort of statement, and it’s similarly magical. This is a great book. It’s about aging and regret – all the species of folly that fit into the taxonomy our narrator Nathan Glass puts forward – but it’s also deeply human. The structure is deeply sophisticated: Nathan tells us up front that he’s suddenly aware impending death and then he talks of his experiences in Brooklyn as he reconnects with his favorite nephew and an ever-widening cast of characters. In the course of it, he veers from one anecdote to another, compressing time and rendering dialogue indirectly.

The heart of the novel is the “Book of Folly” that Nathan composes. He sets out to record stories of unfulfilled ambition, ironic failure, and undeserved optimism. He shares only a few of those with us, but I’d sum up the bottom line with the old Yiddish maxim, “Man plans. God laughs.” We rarely hear about his writing, but it’s always there, always something that calls to him. And that theme of folly, of people believing they are chosen for good fortune or that they have the capacity to chart the lives they want for themselves, runs throughout.

Without giving away too much, let me say that Nathan and the others collectively trend toward settling down. They want to connect to others. They want to build homes. In the late Lou Reed vein of things, Auster is able to celebrate that allure of domesticity because he gives a consistent sense of Nathan’s (and by extension his own) world weariness. “Let’s all get married and have kids” sounds pollyanna-ish from someone who’s prone to conservative experiences. It’s something else when it comes from someone who finds himself startled to be alive, someone who has discovered conventional values along an unconventional path.

The bottom line is that you’re in the hands of a master with this one. This is a great meditation on aging and on our American moment at the start of the 21st century, and I’ll be looking for more Auster again soon.

Plot & characters s/t strain credulity

I've never read Paul Auster before, but suspect this is not his best work. Brooklyn Follies is well written, well read, and mostly interesting, with a likable narrator. I'm giving it only three stars because its creaky plotline is at times trite and predictable and at other times strains credulity. The plot is also occasionally advanced through tediously long monologues by various family members, monologues which copy exactly the style and syntax of the narrator himself, rather than what you'd expect from the various characters. (As an aside, I didn't understand why are there musical interludes if this is an unabridged book?)