"Love, loss, memory, and the bittersweet shifts of aging, this meditative, thought-provoking novel casts a glowing light on how it feels, and what it means, to move through life."
Intimate and witty; contemplative and consummately absorbing, Paul Auster’s Baumgartner is a rare work that compels time to stand still as we step into the mind, memories and everyday life of its 71-year-old protagonist.
Professor Sy Baumgartner, a notable writer, is on the brink of retiring from his academic career. Though his wife Anna, also a writer, passed away some ten years ago in an untimely accident, Sy remains haunted by his loss, and by her tangible absence. Anna remains a potent presence in their home, and in his every thought, and much of this short novel is given over to his memories of their life together. Baumgartner also sees Sy reflect on his childhood and youth, his parents‘ lives as Polish immigrants to America, and a work trip to Ukraine two years ago.
The novel is also dappled with moments from the present, with incisive accounts of daily events, such as an encounter with the guy who’s come to read a meter. A new relationship. Sy observing the nuances of the weather, and the hardness of a chair.
Some of Sy and Anna’s writings are presented, too — their lives in words. Towards the end of the novel, Sy completes his latest book, and then comes an unexpected request that enlivens his thoughts and daily life, while also drawing him back to Anna’s writings, and into a frenzy of elation sparked by the possibility of having a new project — the promise of what could be “bookends of his life”, perhaps “the final chapter in the saga of S.T. Baumgartner.”
Introspective, with a lightness of touch that brilliantly belies its profound undercurrents, Baumgartner is utterly immersive.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
