Invisible

Paul Auster

His early novels depicted characters at sea in a dystopia (New York Trilogy), or utterly lost (In the Country of Last Things), or simply desolate (The Book of Illusions).

They could be called bleak but there is a sort of resolution reached at the final curtain. However, so much of the action is folded back on itself it is hard to tell where the end really is. Invisible is a case in point. The action takes place from 1967 to 2007 mainly in Paris and New York. Adam Walker, a young student of poetry, is lured into the world of Rudolf Born and his lover Margot. Born is a deeply sinister character whose malaise is captured by the callow Walker by referencing a medieval French poet who shares Born’s name and his sadistic temperament.

Walker is gulled by Born into editing a literary magazine and induced into taking his girlfriend to bed. A confused and love-struck Walker is terror stricken when Born ruthlessly kills a mugger. Their friendship falls apart and Walker takes off for Paris.

Enter a new narrator, Jim, an old acquaintance of Walker’s, whose memories of events of 1967 are stirred by Walker’s letters and his notes for a novel. Walker reveals more of the events and motivations of the time to Jim. There follows a section of Walker’s novel, which is part of the novel Invisible itself, relating an incestuous relationship with his sister Gwyn.

Walker, as narrated by Jim, brings Born’s world crashing down by revealing the story of the killing of the mugger to Born’s fiancee. Any reader still managing to hold on to the plot at this stage deserves an Oscar for acrobatics. A complicated but not a complex novel where a decent story gets lost.