Paul Auster – Sunset Park – Review

It's a sheer pleasure to return to a favorite author's work after a ten year respite. Aside from the love of many of the dead American writers like Faulkner, Vonnegut, Mailer, Bellow, and Twain, personally one has to include Paul Auster as one of the great 'living' writers of the 21^st century. I was working for a local newspaper at the time, around the early nineties, that a graphic artist working for the same company introduced me to The New York Trilogy by Auster, which turned me into a true believer, and I've never looked back. 

All of Auster's novels have tacit magic about them. All his characters are banal in extraordinary ways. In Sunset Park, these qualities are exemplified in the novel's character studies; their thoughts, situations and emotional depths, revolving around an abandoned house in Sunset Park, New York. Auster weaves their stories together with a profound understanding of the human psyche under the economic recession of 2008. All these people are suffering and fighting their own demons who, over time, find themselves living in a vacant house, squatting, supporting each other economically, emotionally, and otherwise over a time span of several months.

The closest person who could be called the main character is Miles Heller. The son of a distinguished publisher and famous film actress, we discover that he has exiled himself away from his family in New York, moving from state to state, working minimum wage jobs,  finally ends up in Florida. Here, he works for a company that cleans out houses that were abandoned due to the 2008 housing crisis. Strangely his hobby is to photograph the numerous chattels and “things” that have been left behind by the owners. This is a way to not allow these things to be forgotten, documenting their existence as part of our civilization narrative, our story.

Bing Nathan is the larger than life character who is the squatter mastermind of the decrepit house in Sunset Park. He is Miles Heller's best friend from high school, who owns and runs a curious shop on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope: The Hospital of Lost things. “...it is a hole-in-the-wall storefront enterprise devoted to repairing objects from an era that has all been banished from the face of the earth: manual typewriters, fountain pens...” (p.73). Bing Nathan is mostly the glue that holds these talented and interesting people together under one “homeless” roof.

When one reads an Auster novel, the characters are so real that we cannot help but to identify, sympathize and empathize as if we have been friends for many years. Paul Auster's ability to do this reveals his genius as a novelist.

Sunset Park is ultimately about human nature, our failures, dreams, and brokenness as souls attempting to survive in a difficult and, at times, cruel world. The story shows our emotional insecurities and our need for 'connection' with our fellow beings. The story is about love and the necessity to exist, living our lives in the here and now.

An exceptional novel.