by PAUL AUSTER
I'm quickly emerging from a slack couple of reading years. Since becoming obsessed with classic novels '1984' and 'Steppenwolf,' I crassly convinced myself that there couldn't be any books out there that could pack any more punch than those. I did subsequently trawl through 'The Go-Between,' but soon got fed up of 'Mrs. Dalloway'� and had barely read anything since, until I suddenly felt drawn to Beverley's 'cut-price bookstore' and the sleeve of 'MOON PALACE'�
And Jesus - this is an astonishing masterpiece that's just as mind-blowing as it is potentially life-changing.
Written by American-born and bred author Paul Auster (b. 1947), it focuses on the orphaned Marco Fogg who lives in New York in the sixties with his Uncle Victor. But as soon as his Uncle dies, the young Marco's out-on-his-feet and instantaneously sharpening-his-wits in a wet and cold Central Park, sleeping rough with no money; no nothing: no hope. Until, that is, a girl he'd met called Kitty Wu comes to his rescue and they shack up together.
Pulling himself together and getting a job, he assigns himself as 'carer' to the old Thomas Effing. The frail man makes huge demands, as Effing is blind and wants to see everything around him desperately. As Fogg becomes the man's eyes and ears on the world around, he also gains his trust� and as the 2 polarized generations warm to each other, Effing slowly spills out his fascinating, tragic life story that makes cause for the bulk of the middle of the 300-page novel to set itself vibrantly in the American Mid-West. Recounting his formative years spent 'out-West,' Effing talks of the wife and son of his that he had no choice but to leave behind in pursuit of his work as an artist� and in this comes a purely coincidental twist (or is it?) in the tale, as Fogg comes to unbelievably discover that Effing's never-seen-again son is in fact Fogg's never-seen-before father, Solomon�
Despite the preposterous premise, the slow-but-sure method of storytelling that Auster adopts is utterly compelling. His sublime, detailed writing style is like nothing I've read before, and the final few pages that literally chronicles Fogg as he boldly walks as far away as possible from his 'past' life - given the bizarre way that things pan out - is in pure 'Shawshank Redemption' vein: as hopeful as heaven and optimistically outward bound� gagging for the next chapter.
'Moon Palace' is an intoxicating, cross-USA epic that starts on the East Coast in NYC and winds-down on the Pacific coast, languishing in wildly vivid Utah desert-scapes for the best part� and it genuinely brandishes the ability to stop you in its tracks to question where, what and why you aspire to do what you will do anyway with the rest of your fickle life.
Make the most of it I'd say.
(STEVE RUDD)
www.paulauster.co.uk