David Zimmer, who has lost his wife and sons in a plane crash, is brought out of his depression by watching old silent films starring Hector Mann, a 1920s star who disappeared without trace at the height of his career. He decides to research Mann's life and once his biography of Mann is published, he receives a letter from someone claiming to know where Mann now is.

I had previously read Auster's New York Trilogy and didn't like it. However, I really enjoyed this and was gripped by the story. I apologise unreservedly to Auster for all the times I said he was grossly overrated and not nearly as good a writer as his wife, Siri Hustvedt (even if this wasn't quite as good as "What I Loved"...)

I loved the first 200 pages of this book, especially the opening description of Hector Mann's films and flew through these pages. However, I don't think that the later part of the book was as good it should have been the most dramatic part of the book but for me it lost momentum.
I'm on holiday in France at the moment, my friend who is with me has expressed some interest in reading this so it will get passed to her, if she finishes it or doesn't enjoy it the book will be left at an English charity book shop here.

At one point in the story we are told about a character who belives he has discovered a blue stone which turns out to actually be the saliva of a passerby disguised by the sunlight. I feel that this little story acts as a perfect analogy for the book itself; I had high hopes which were shattered by the uneven plot, two-dimensional female characters (just a little note to the author here; women don't tend to keep makeup in the bathroom) and casual use of death to create feeling in otherwise banal characters.

On a positive note however, I did appreciate the creation of the character Hector Mann but felt he was too big even for the author to comprehend meaning we only get to see snippets of his life and mind through a humdrum character and lenghty references to his films. (Another note to author: descriptions of films, like dream sequences, can only sustain the interest of the reader for so long unless they are reading for specificity yet the main character informs us 'I'm not really interested in movies and have never written about them- it shows!)

I would like to conclude on a rather facetious note in a similar style to the way the book was written. The reason the work of the Hector must be burned is because essentially the author could not cope with an interesting character and sub-conciously all his little brain cells manifested into the other characters and killed him thus the book becomes a narcissitic thrill for the author perhaps but please next time leave the public out of it-

I'll leave it near the tree