Invisible

Paul Auster’s newest offering, ‘Invisible,’ certainly got our book club talking this week. From heated debates over the moral decorum of the lead character, Adam, to whether Auster had actually conjured the Devil in the antagonist, Born. One thing was agreed we were all spell bound by the book and read it in almost one sitting

Adam’s tale opens in New York City in the spring of 1967 when the 20-year-old aspiring poet and student at Columbia University meets the enigmatic Frenchman, Rudolf Born, and his silent and seductive girlfriend, Margot. Before long Adam 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, as it travels in time from 1967 to 2007 and moves from New York to Paris and to a remote Caribbean island in a story of unbridled sexual hunger and a relentless quest for justice. This change in narrator and the change in person certainly gave a different perspective to each part of this tale but some of our book club found it a little off putting. As for the sex scenes, though we all agreed they were done with taste for the most part, some of them came as quite a shock.

With uncompromising insight, Auster takes us to the shadowy borderland between truth and memory, authorship and identity to produce a work of unforgettable power that confirms his reputation as one of America's most spectacularly inventive writers. I think I could safely say that our book club would highly recommend this book to anyone. Well anyone who is not put off by dark characters and twisted tales.