A more scaled-down, stripped-back affair that traces a single life-trajectory in a more conventional way. And it is all the better for it ... Shifts among a variety of tones ... By dispensing with his postmodern pyrotechnics, Auster has produced a more grounded and consequently more believable work about a memorable life — and a life of memories. It may not be vintage Auster, but it is moving and compelling enough to qualify as a late-career triumph.
I can hear the whingeing already: Nothing happens in this novel. It’s too slow, it’s boring, it’s not high concept or high event ... What kind of a novel is “Baumgartner,” then? It’s lovely. It’s sweet. It’s odd. But maybe not so odd for Auster fans who will immediately want to locate Baumgartner in his body of work (he’s written 20 novels) and to look for leitmotifs and signature moves. There are plenty ... Early pages showcase some gorgeous passages about his wife ... The novel begins to lose some of its urgency. Let’s call it a lull between chapters for Sy, though his final chapter is unclear. The novel doesn’t tell us where he’s going, settling instead for irresolution and ambiguity.
I wanted to love Baumgartner...and for some 40 glorious pages I did ... Winningly farcical and fast-moving, it’s a terrific opening ... Yet even in the most involving moments there’s a red flag: Auster’s actual words, and the events they itemise, matter less than the fact of their accumulation ... Odd ... Auster’s turbo-charged kickstart ultimately takes us on a ride without destination.
In the end Baumgartner feels not so much like a novel as one of the scrapbooks of memories that Auster has published ... It has an elegiac quality to it, which is pleasing in itself but it isn’t quite enough. Even the excellent and surprising final page works mostly, alas, as a poignant reminder of how good he used to be.
Intimate ... Still, I wanted more — I wanted Baumgartner to unravel, the thread to snap ... Hints of reality intensify the novel’s reflection on what it is to love someone and what a partnership might look like when one half is no longer there. Auster has always been enchanted by memory, chance, echo. Here, the charge of that obsession electrifies.
Auster’s slyly self-referential fiction is full of subtle linguistic games, and this, his 20th novel, is no exception, offering a rueful warning about the costs of constructing a sense of self through words ... I’ve said that Baumgartner is frustrating. Mostly the effect is deliberate.
Beautifully modulated ... Auster writes with elegiac grace, but I struggled to feel a strong connection to the characters. I am unsure if it is my fault or the author’s
A well-drawn portrait of a man wrestling with grief, and a sensitive character study that displays many of the qualities for which Auster's been lauded in a long literary career ... Revealed in episodic fashion and with precise, observant, and sometimes touching detail ... The novel's ambiguous ending may not be satisfying to some, but it's consistent with the themes and tone of what has gone before. S.T. Baumgartner isn't the sort of character most people will encounter in everyday life, but, as Auster has created him, that doesn't detract from his appeal, or make his story any less poignant.
A profound character study of a man whose advancing years are shaped by mourning and memory ... The effect builds to a beautiful approximation of memory’s fluidity and allure. This is one to savor.
Baumgartner’s mind is full of late-life insights and angst, while his capacity for love provides a rich emotional seam. Auster packs a lot into this slim novel, including, alas, prose so prone to cliché that the mind winces. An always intriguing writer mostly playing to his strengths.
