Secondly, you’ll frequently find yourself drawn into an engrossing storyline, only for it to vanish as you leap to a parallel universe – which you struggle to recall from what is essentially four chapters ago. Firstly, the format isn’t explained within the novel, so unless you read the blurb (which I never do, on account of their terrible habit of ruining the first two-thirds of a novel) you’re in for a confusing first few chapters, as dead characters bewilderingly resurrect themselves. In each, changes in his relationships, family or hobbies take him down wildly different paths – in one, his father’s business collapses, in another his parents get stinking rich and live uptown in one, Ferguson loses three fingers in a car crash, in another he’s dead at age 12. The idea is that we follow a boy named Ferguson through four different versions of his own life. It has proved a somewhat consuming undertaking.Īt the heart of 4321 is what you might either term a ground-breaking structural innovation, or a gimmick. Well, so you might think – but this year, the shortlist’s slenderer volumes are dwarfed by the hulking mass of 4321 by Paul Auster, a much-celebrated American author who said he spent four years writing this 1070-page tome. “It’s nearly a month since September 13th! Surely you should have finished more than one by now?” This year, as last year, I thought I’d try to read the Booker Prize shortlist in the five weeks between it being unveiled on September 13th and awarded on October 17th.

Paul auster 4321 reviews