"Man in the Dark"

by Paul Auster, AF, 2008, 180p, rating=4
source: library
recommend to mature reader d/t heavy descriptive violence

So begins Paul Auster’s brilliant, devastating novel about the many realities we inhabit as wars flame all around us.
Seventy-two-year-old August Brill is recovering from a car accident in his daughter’s house in Vermont. When sleep refuses to come, he lies in bed and tells himself stories, struggling to push back thoughts about things he would prefer to forget—his wife’s recent death and the horrific murder of his granddaughter’s boyfriend, Titus. The retired book critic imagines a parallel world in which America is not at war with Iraq but with itself. In this other America the twin towers did not fall and the 2000 election results led to secession, as state after state pulled away from the union and a bloody civil war ensued. As the night progresses, Brill’s story grows increasingly intense, and what he is so desperately trying to avoid insists on being told. Joined in the early hours by his granddaughter, he gradually opens up to her and recounts the story of his marriage. After she falls asleep, he at last finds the courage to revisit the trauma of Titus’s death.
Passionate and shocking, Man in the Dark is a novel of our moment, a book that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence. (book cover)

This was like two books in one.  The first two-thirds of this book depicted a dystopian story ...  a parallel America in civil war instead of 9/11 and the Iraq war, then abruptly in the last third it was like a confessional biographical novella.  So in the beginning, I was excited and engrossed with the action and mystery-ish of the tale.  I was fascinated with the story within the story.  Then poof! the direction shifted and the story got sentimental.  I wasn't sure if I liked that but come to think of it, I like dystopia and of course sentimental stories ..so it was killing two birds in one stone. 

This involved a pretty heavy content.  Understandably since it was talking about war and war is hardly ever pretty.  I repeat the blurb's last statement, "Passionate and shocking, Man in the Dark is a novel of our moment, a book that forces us to confront the blackness of night even as it celebrates the existence of ordinary joys in a world capable of the most grotesque violence."  That statement foreshadows the ending of the book for me ..hopeful.  Some people might see the complete opposite but the characters were taking steps to move forward and capture some ordinary joys again so that's attacking life, not being despairing. 

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