"Sinuously constructed in four interlocking parts, Paul Auster’s fifteenth novel opens in New York City in the spring of 1967, when twenty-year-old Adam Walker, an aspiring poet and student at Columbia University, meets the enigmatic Frenchman Rudolf Born and his silent and seductive girfriend, Margot. Before long, Walker finds himself caught in a perverse triangle that leads to a sudden, shocking act of violence that will alter the course of his life.

Three different narrators tell the story of Invisible, a novel that travels in time from 1967 to 2007 and moves from Morningside Heights, to the Left Bank of Paris, to a remote island in the Caribbean. It is a book of youthful rage, unbridled sexual hunger, and a relentless quest for justice. With uncompromising insight, Auster takes us into the shadowy borderland between truth and memory, between authorship and identity, to produce a work of unforgettable power that confirms his reputation as “one of America’s most spectacularly inventive writers."


I’m a definite fan of Auster’s writing, although I didn’t enjoy this one quite as much as the other I read recently (The Music of Chance). Invisible is a fairly typical Auster novel in terms of themes and is easy to read although some of the specific subject matter is far from “easy”. There are multiple narrators, stories within stories, conflicting accounts of episodes, and shifting points of view involving first, second and third person narratives all relating to the main protagonist, Adam Walker.

Intriguing, compelling, unsettling, and very accomplished.

Sending to jeniwren as a choice from the last round of the OZ VBB.

Thankyou arrived safe and sound :)