My full review is now live: http://theliterarytree.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/everything-could-be-different-4-3-2-1.html

I’ve been meaning to read Paul Auster for a long time, so I was over the moon when I had the chance to review 4-3-2-1*. I know it’s very much a different beast to his other books, firstly, in terms of scale and narrative ambition, but it was well worth persevering with. It’s not one to be rushed, it took me probably 3-4 weeks of my commute but I have missed it since finishing it. It’s an extraordinarily layered coming-of-age tale (x4) – playful, tragic, philosophical and wise. But it’s not so much a character study as the study of an idea and it’s the wit and wisdom and tragedy with which Auster’s omniscient narrator explores this idea that the book really impacts lastingly. There will be a few spoilers in the following paragraphs so it may be best to read this after the book itself.

‘Such an interesting thought, Ferguson said to himself: to imagine how things could be different for him even though he was the same. The same boy in a different house with a different tree. The same boy with different parents. The same boy with the same parents who didn’t do the same things they did now… Yes, anything was possible, and just because things happened in one way didn’t mean they couldn’t happen in another. Everything could be different’ - 1.2

The story begins with Ferguson’s father initially emigrating to the U.S.A – and the comic moment where he forgets the America surname he’d devised, and his German ‘vergessen’ is mistaken for ‘Ferguson’. After the precedent for accident and irony have been set, the story begins with young Archibald Ferguson’s entry into the world, and the narratives divide into four. They have the same biology, the same DNA, they are all born in the same hospital at the same time but then all move to different suburban towns, and the fate of Ferguson’s father is different for each. They ultimately all choose different kinds of writing as their calling and, depending on events within their lives, become political to some degree and foster different relationships, though the relationship with Ferguson’s cousin Amy is fairly consistent with each.

While talking to Granta (https://granta.com/paul-auster-conversation/), Auster laid out these themes and talked about how he wrote the book in a fever, ‘possessed’. He wanted to convey the idea that the ‘world is very precarious’, ‘life becomes death in a flash’ and ultimately, ‘we are all accidents’. The death in a flash reference is quite literal for one of the young Ferguson’s – who is killed by a tree struck by lightning. This is actually based on a real event which has haunted Auster from his childhood, when a boy was electrocuted by lightning next to him. Indeed the Fergusons all encounter random accidents, and three meet unexpected premature ends at different stages of their young lives. Each time is tragic as the omniscient narrator really elucidates the accidental and random misfortune of the moment, yet you’ve been so enmeshed with each Ferguson’s history and prospects and unique relationships, that each one weighs heavily.

Paul Auster


With 4 different narratives marking that coming-of-age experience, there are perhaps moments when things can feel repetitive. As puberty kicks in, you experience Ferguson’s first sexual cravings four times, and these are told in great detail. But Auster is nothing if not thorough in his mission and that is something to be admired ultimately.

Auster is so good at drawing out that human experience and those first realisations about the world as you grow up. I particularly loved the moment that one young Ferguson realises that adults are just as scared as children – something that’s intensely recognisable:

‘His mother looked agitated, more confused and distraught than Ferguson had ever seen her, no longer acting as the rock of composure and wisdom he had always thought she was but someone just like himself, a fragile being prey to sadness and tears and hopefulness, and when she put her arms around him he felt frightened, not just because his father’s store had burned down and there would be no more money for them to live on. But the truly frightening thing was to learn that his mother was no stronger than he was, that the blows of the world hurt her just as much as they hurt him and that except for the fact that she was older, there was no difference between them’ - 1.2

So much of the book is about the fragility and absurdity of existence, but also about living anyway – and not succumbing to the accompanying fear. Often there are brilliant, standalone sentences of the fates/universe/gods responding to events in this small individual’s existence:

‘The gods looked down from their mountain and shrugged.’ 6.3

The indifferent universe is something that I’ve always found intensely interesting in books I’ve read (I am a big Camus fan and fan of post-war existentialism in general) and it’s very much present here. In some ways it makes every action more poignant and important, it’s frustrating and tragic, but it’s also freeing. There’s something grimly satisfying about reading a line like that.

There are some reviews which have called Auster self-indulgent in this novel, and perhaps that’s true to a degree, but I wouldn’t necessarily say it as a negative. I am fine with writers like Auster, Gaiman, Atwood and indeed any writer being ‘self-indulgent’ so long as what they’re writing stimulates thought and challenges a reader in a productive way – ie. when a reader can reflect on it and draw multiple conclusions. They very premise of 4-3-2-1 is by its nature indulgent, and it’s open about that. Wouldn’t it be indulgent if we had four separate lives we could live and dip into?

‘Ferguson understood that the world was made of stories, so many different stories that if they were all gathered together and put into a book, the book would be nine hundred million pages long.’ 4.4

We should always try to read things which challenge us, and maybe even make us a little uncomfortable at times.

‘No, Ferguson replied, when Artie’s parents asked if he agreed with this boy, but that was what made their conversations so instructive, he said, because every time Mike challenged him he would have to think harder about what he believed in himself, and how could you ever learn anything if you only talked to people who thought exactly as you did’? 4.4

Auster explores sexuality (specifically pansexuality), political feeling, art, love, death and loss and so many of the colours on these spectrums. The reflection sexuality on love and ‘choice’ are poignant. All of the Ferguson’s follow wherever their feelings take them when it comes to love and sex – they very much fall in love with the person.

‘She still didn’t think of herself as a lesbian, she was simply a person in love with another person, and because that other person was beautiful and entrancing and unlike anyone else in the world, what difference did it make if she was in love with a man or a woman’ 4.3

‘Why did a person have to choose between one or the other, why block out one-half of humanity in the name of normal or natural when the truth was that everyone was Both, and people and society and the laws and religions of people in different societies were just too afraid to admit it. As the California cowgirl had said to him three and a half years ago: I believe in my life, Archie, and I don’t want to be scared of it. Brian was scared. Most people were scared, but scared was a stupid way to live, Ferguson felt, a dishonest and demoralizing way to live, a dead-end life, a dead life.’ 5.3

‘It wasn’t that Ferguson felt any enthusiasm for the Democrats, but it was important to make distinctions, he told himself, important to recognise that there were bad things in this flawed world, but also even worse things, and when it came to voting in an election, better to go for the bad over the worse’ 6.1

I delighted in moments like these - that last quote must be a cheeky reference to real-life politics and the situations that the UK and USA have found themselves in in the last couple of years. Indeed – another one:

‘What moment could be more important for the writing of books than a year when the world was on fire—and you were on fire with it?’ 7.4

There’s something to be learned in the individual lives of each Ferguson – in all the banal moments, the icky firsts, the freak accidents, and the existential quandaries. For me, the ending is clever and makes you think back on all you've read, adding further layers and elements of pathos. There's so much in this novel that could be explored and unpicked - but these are my thoughts as of now on a work I certainly admire and still find myself revisiting in my mind. It's a commitment worth making.

More favourite quotes:

Self-aware narration:

‘There was, as there always is, another side to the story’ 2.1

On music:

‘The need for music that ran through their bodies, which as that point in their lives was no different from the need to find a way to exist in the world’ 2.1

On curiosity:

‘Anger and disappointment could take you just so far, he realised, but without curiosity you were lost’ 2.4

Even with four versions of a live, you’ll never have THE answer – just answers:

‘I’m saying you’ll never know if you made the wrong choice or not. You would need to have all the facts before you knew, and the only way to get all the facts is to be in two places at the same time—which is impossible.’ 2.4

On feeling:

‘We feel what we feel, he wrote, and we’re not responsible for our feelings. For our actions, yes, but not for what we feel’ 3.4

A beautiful moment of self-reflection:

‘Ferguson was beginning to understand how fragile he was, how difficult it was for him to steer his way through even the smallest conflicts, especially conflicts brought on by his own flaws and stupidities. For the point was that he needed to be loved, loved more than most people needed to be loved, entirely loved without respite through every waking minute of his life, loved even when he did things that made him unlovable, especially when reason demanded that he not be loved, and unlike Amy, who was pushing her mother away from her, Ferguson could never let go of his mother.’ 4.3

On life and the self:

‘People die, and the world goes on, and whatever we can do to help each other out, well, that’s what we do, isn’t it?’ 6.1

‘And what did it mean to be himself anyway, he wondered, he had several selves inside him, even many selves, a strong self and a weak self, a thoughtful self and an impulsive self, a generous self and a selfish self, so many different selves that in the end he was as large as everyone or as small as no one, and if that was true for him, then it had to be true for everyone else as well, meaning that everyone was everyone and no one at the same time’ 6.3


‘The world as it was could never be more than a fraction of the world, for the real also consisted of what could have happened but didn’t, that one road was no better or worse than any other road, but the torment of being alive in a single body was that at any given moment you had to be on one road only, even though you could have been on another, travelling toward an altogether different place’ 7.4

*Thank you to Faber for the chance to review 4-3-2-1 through Netgalley.

Superb intelligent fiction with a thoroughly engrossing storyline. I think this book will easily become a modern day classic which will doubtless be studied by Literature students in the coming years. Well worth reading and I highly recommend this title. Thanks Netgalley for sending me this title.

This is a great idea, a really fascinating look at how life choices echo down our years. For me it was extremely difficult to keep the four story strands distinct in my mind and I did have to go back and forth to keep the storylines straight. As a Brit I also got very lost in the baseball/ basketball detail.

A rewarding and thoughtful novel, worth reading when you have plenty of time to read carefully.

I enjoyed this very much. A warm and fascinating insight into how different environmental factors can influence a person's life. I liked all four version of Ferguson, was sad to lose them and would like to know what happened to the 'real one'.

Thanks to NetGalley and to Faber & Faber for providing me with an ARC copy of this novel that I freely chose to review.
I’ve been following with interest the Man-Booker Prize this year and realised I had quite a few of the books on my list to be read and decided to try and read in a timely manner and see how my opinion compared to that of the judges. When the shortlist was announced, only one of the books I had read so far had made it, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, a book I really enjoyed. And then I got the chance to read 4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster, another one of the novels shortlisted, and I could not resist.
I had read a novel by Paul Auster years back, The Book of Illusions and although I remember I enjoyed it, I had never read another one of his books until now. It wasn’t a conscious decision, and I had always kept in mind that at some point I should pick up another one of his books but that day hadn’t arrived.
I hadn’t read anything about this novel before I started reading it, other than it had been shortlisted for the Man-Booker, and therefore I was a bit surprised and confused, to begin with.
First, as happens with e-books, I had no idea how long it was. It’s around the 900 pages mark. Second, I didn’t realise it was a fairly experimental novel, or, at least its structure was not standard. The novel starts as if it was going to be a family saga, with the story of a Jewish immigrant arriving in New York, and we follow his story and that of his family for a couple of generations until we get to the birth of a boy, Archibald Ferguson. He doesn’t like his first name that much and for the rest of the novel he is referred to as Ferguson. When things start getting weird is when at some point you become aware that you are reading four different versions of his life. These are narrated in the third person, although always from the point of view of the character, and yes, they are numbered. So the first chapter (or part), you would have 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 and then, the next part would be 2.1… and so on. The story (stories) are told chronologically but chopped up into bits. Some of the reviewers have commented that you need to be a member of MENSA to remember and differentiate the various stories, because yes, there are differences (fate seems to play a big part, as sometimes due to incidents that happen to his family, financial difficulties, relationship issues… the story takes a different turn and deviates from the other versions), but these are not huge, and it is difficult to keep in your mind which one of the versions is which one (at times I would have been reading for a while before I could remember how this version was different to the one I had just been reading). Because the differences are not major (yes, in one version he ends up going to a university and in another to a different one, in one he works at a newspaper and in another starts writing books, in one he goes out with a girl and in another they are only friends…), and the characters are pretty much the same in all versions (although sometimes their behaviour is quite different) it makes the stories very similar. Added to that, all versions of the character are also very similar as if the different circumstances were not earth-shattering and had not affected that much the development of his boy (in the debate of nature, nurture, it’s safe to say Auster supports nature). The devil seems to be in the detail, or perhaps the point is that we might strongly believe that there are moments when our decisions could have sent us down one path or a completely different one (Sliding Doors anyone?), but the truth is that of all the infinite possibilities (and that makes me think of a book I read very recently, Do You Realize?) only one is conducive to life as we know it (the Goldilocks theory of life. Neither too hot nor too cold, just right) and our life was meant to be as it if.
Ferguson loves films and is a bit of a film buff (there are lengthy digressions about Laurel & Hardy, the French New Wave, American Films…), he also loves books and writing, and some versions of the story include his translations of French poets, or his own stories (that sometimes end up being exactly the same as the story we are reading, and others are either full stories or fragments of the books he is writing), and sports, mostly baseball, although also basketball.
Towards the end of the book (well, it’s a long book, so let’s say from the time the characters goes to college), we get much more detailed information about politics and historical events in America. There are lengthy descriptions of reactions to the murders of J.F.K, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, race riots, the Black Power Movement, the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement, the Columbia University demonstrations and student political organisations, and also about New York and Paris (more New York than Paris) in the 1960s and early 70s. Although in one of the versions Ferguson is attending Columbia, he is a reporter and even when he is physically there, he narrates the events as an observer rather than as if he was personally involved. His engagement seems to be intellectual above all, no matter what version of Ferguson we read, although the reasons for his attitude might be different.

What I thought the book did very well, in all its versions, was to capture the feelings and the thoughts of a teenager and young man (although, as I’m a woman, I might be completely wrong). Although the emphasis is slightly different in each version, that is fairly consistent and rings true. As a writer and film lover, I enjoyed the comments about books and movies, although these could be frustrating to some readers. I also enjoyed the works in progress of the various Fergusons (some more than others) but this could again be annoying to readers who prefer to follow a story and not wander and float in flights of fancy. I agree with some of the comments I’ve read that the latter part of the book is slowed down even more by the endless description of incidents at Columbia that, no matter the version of the story we read, are analytically reported rather than brought to life.
My main problem with the book is that I did not connect that much with the main character. Considering the amount of time readers get to spend with the different versions of Ferguson, we get to know him, but I did not feel for him. Strangely enough, sometimes I felt more connected to some of the other characters in the story (his mother in some versions, some of his friends, a teacher…) than I did to him. I’m not sure if it was because it all felt very artificial, or because none of the versions completely gelled for me. I admired his intellect but did not connect at an emotional level and I did not care for him. I’m aware that readers who know Auster’s oeuvre better have commented on the biographical similarities with his own life, and I’m aware that he has denied it is (or are) his story. There are, for sure, many points of contact. Some readers have compared it to books that have used a somewhat similar format to tell their stories, but as I haven’t read any, I will not comment on that. The ending, metafictional as was to be expected, will probably satisfy more those who enjoy formal literary experiments than those looking for a good story. I do not think many people will find it surprising, but I don’t think that was the author’s goal. The writing is good, sometimes deep and challenging, others more perfunctory. And yes, I still intend to read other Auster’s books in the future.
In sum, a fascinating exercise in writing, that will be of interest primarily to followers of Auster’s career, to those who love experimental literary fiction, particularly those interested also in films, literature, the writing process, sports, and New York. Not a book I’d recommend to those who love dynamic stories with exciting plots, or those who prefer to emotionally engage with characters. Ah, and it requires a reasonable memory and a serious investment of time.

The description of this book fascinated me - the story follows the life of Ferguson, the only son of Rose and Stanley; however it looks at four different routes his life takes. It tells of four different lifestyles and shows how making one life choice instead of another can drastically change how well.... or not.... your life can turn out. Unfortunately I found it extremely hard reading as there is no real distinction between the four routes and so becomes very confusing. The lengthy descriptions of events is distracting from the story line and I found it hard to concentrate for any length of time. I usually persevere with books but sadly find that I am choosing other books to read instead of this one so have only managed a quarter of the book. Maybe I will try again at some point if I run out of books.

When I heard about this book, I was really excited by its premise, and the book did fulfill some of that expectation. I've always been fascinated by how easily our lives can and do diverge from a single event and how fascinating to see that in play here. However I found the parallel tales too detailed. I don't know if it was this, that created a distance between myself and the main character Ferguson, but I found I didn't really care about him. The concept of the book, so brilliant, was dulled for me by the lengthy execution.
Many thanks to Netgalley for an ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

Paul Auster writes really well. The descriptions and details in this book are brilliant. You can imagine yourself there. The sheer size of this book got to me. It felt like a marathon read. It was really interesting the way the four lives of Archie were written about. There has obviously been a lot of research put into this book and a lot of work and time to get Archie's 4 lives written about.

To describe this book, I can think of only one adjective: monumental. 4321 is a kind of book of books, an immense piece of skill with such complexity that it can be compared only to a Russian classic. Pushing the "what if" to the extreme, Auster makes his protagonist live four lives, intertwining the same main characters in all possible ways, without ever losing the thread and an extraordinary coherence, telling in the meantime in an exhaustive way, but never boring because mediated by the eyes of his multiple protagonist, a huge slice of the history of the United States of last century, and providing us with enlightening insights into his relationship with literature and writing. A book that, despite its length, can't tire.
I thank Faber and Faber Ltd and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy in return for an honest review.

4 3 2 1 is an epic novel that charts the life of one character in four stories that diverge from the moment he is born. Archie Ferguson, a Jewish American from New Jersey whose grandfather came to Ellis Island from Minsk, is born to Rose and Stanley Ferguson and from that point, his life goes four different ways, with four different Fergusons living and making choices and reacting to what goes on around them. They all battle with love and loss, write and play baseball and basketball, make friends and difficult decisions, all with the backdrop of America throughout the 1950s and 1960s, racism, the Vietnam War, and political upheaval. Every version of Ferguson has his individual story march on towards mortality, for they might’ve all started the same, but they don’t end up that way.

This is a masterful novel, a long ride through different ways that a single character could go, a character that is clearly the same person exposed to different things, allowed to have various thoughts and ideas, and with the people around him acting differently. Ferguson himself is decently complex, an aspiring writer who enjoys sports, learns French, and is sometimes a bit too clever for his own good. Auster doesn’t overplay the conceit too far, allowing central characters to appear across the stories and others to have cameos in one and a larger role in another, but not forcing every character into every story.

It is vital to know the concept before starting to read the book; this isn’t one to have its blurb ignored. Each chapter tells a different part of each story, chronologically, so that you get the first section of a Ferguson’s life four times, then the next section, and so on. This means that it is important to keep in mind which major events happen in which narrative, making Auster’s novel not much of a light read, but something to get stuck into, and it is far more rewarding when it is read in larger chunks.

4 3 2 1 deals with a number of recurring themes and issues—American life, Jewishness, success and failure, love, sexuality, the act of telling stories and writing them down—over its four narratives, making it a microcosm of America in the middle of the twentieth century as told through one character. It is a long novel, no light commitment and may take a little while to settle into the conceit, but it doesn’t let up and is a book well worth making it to the end of.

My verdict in short: Auster makes you work hard for it, but the writing and storytelling are outstanding – it feels like his magnum opus. His exploration of identity and what makes up a life is subtly yet powerfully done, and will leave you thinking long afterwards. Highly recommended for literary types.

Paul Auster is a literary heavyweight, best-known for his intelligent novels where he plays with absurdism and existentialism (for example, the New York Trilogy where a private New York investigator is hired to track down someone who may or may not be himself). This is quite different: a beast of a book, with 900 (large) pages of Dickensian-like detail, exploring the lives of one person, Ferguson, who tries to find love and purpose in 1950s and 1960s. This is almost a straight saga, but it’s ‘lives’, rather than ‘life’, as the twist is that, depending on the actions of his father on one crucial night, the protagonist’s life goes in four different directions. We never know which life is the ‘real’ one, and in some senses it’s a ‘choose your own adventure’ story, as you find yourself rooting for different versions of his life. I especially loved the way Auster interweaves the political and cultural turbulence of 1950s and 60s America, so it feels well-earthed in time and place.

The first chapter, describing Ferguson’s family tree and how they came to America, was so perfect that it left me breathless. The writing here is a literary pleasure – he writes in long sentences which, paradoxically, speed up rather than slow the writing, like being taken down a fast-flowing current. He has an eye for the absurdity of life, and I found myself chuckling at the funny stories. But reading four different versions of someone’s life is hard work. I read it on kindle, which was a mistake – by the time you have been through four versions of Ferguson’s childhood, you’ve forgotten which reality you’re dealing with by the time you’re reading version one of his teenage years. It would have been easier to flick back through and compare. Having four versions of the same character also has the effect of distancing yourself from the main character, observing from above, rather than in the middle, but it is redeemed by the effect that it has on the reader, plus the Auster-ish twist at the end.

I kept reading because of the vivid storytelling and incredible writing. At one point, the protagonist describes himself as a person equally passionate about the body as the mind. Paul Auster could be describing his writing: he writes powerful, erotic sex scenes (sometimes disturbingly so, in instances of power imbalance and abuse), and captures the physical sense of every environment – New York and Paris being particularly evocative – yet he also takes you deep into discussions about literature, art and philosophy. This is Auster’s strength: that he can do both, and at many points I was wondering how autobiographical this work is: there is a sense in which he is writing himself.

Despite the fact I was tempted to give up at about the halfway mark, I’m glad I persevered, for the themes have stayed with me. What are the elements that make up our core identity, no matter what happens to us? Despite the different outcomes in each version, there are similarities throughout: Ferguson is a writer in some capacity; he falls in love with his soul-mate, Amy; he is pro the Civil Rights Movement; he is close to his mother. It talks of the fragility of life – how one absurd event you have no control of can alter everything. It also highlights the pros and cons of political involvement, the role of the writer, and the complexities of fighting for civil rights. It felt eerily timely for America (and much of the world) today.

*I received a review copy, and this is my honest review*

I struggled with this review. In the end, it takes into account my partner's views as well as my own - because he finished it and I didn't. Undoubtedly, the novel is fantastically well written, the characters beautifully realised, and the novel in parts deeply moving. But thereafter, my partner's views and mine diverge. While he continued to devour and enjoy the rest, I kind of stalled. I couldn't help feeling I was reading a blokey, world-events (well, mostly US events) and baseball-ridden Kate Atkinson's Life After Life. And, since I am not that interested in sport, or American politics, there were sections I found myself skimming. Eventually, I realised I was looking for excuses not to open my kindle - so I stopped. But this is not to say that it's not a great novel, or an amazingly enjoyable read (for some), because it absolutely is. My partner absolutely loved it.

I have loved Paul Auster since I first read 'New York Trilogy' at university, and have since read all fiction titles he has written since. None of them have ever disappointed, and 4321 most certainly doesn't either. At over 800 pages it did take me a while to read, but I enjoyed it immensley. The premise isn't new, but it works - four different Archie Ferguson's, four different paths, four different lives and outcomes, all parallel, experiencing the same historical events and reacting to them. As well as those events that are fixed in time, Archie experiences love, loss, friendship, and heartbreak, all in different ways - in one life a friend is a friend, in another she is a lover, or a a step-sister. His parents are together, divorced, affected by death and loss just as much as Archie is.

Take the time to read this, it is immense, but ultimately satisfying.

Spoilers!
I wanted to love this book as I loved the concept but I only liked it. I wish more happened in each chapter, I wish we went past the age of Archie's early twenties, I wish we explored his life later in life, I wish there were less details but more exploration into the future. The book was informative (history wise) and I had to finish it once I started it, but it was long and did not give me the closure that I wanted.

I have neglected posting this book's review for far too long. Especially when it has been such a pleasant experience reading it as it has. This is one of those slow-burn books that you just can't really read fast – what with it being over 800 pages and all, but not just that. This book is such a long, big experience that you just can't gulp it all down in one sitting. It's definitely hefty, strong, literary and thought provoking.

It's not easy to sum it up. Not only is it an account of an entire life of someone – it's an account of someone's life in four different ways it could have gone. So the amount of possibilities it covers it quite big. That means childhood, growing up, love, loss, death, friendship, sexuality and sexual encounters, God, searching for life's meaning, racial issues, books, writing, sports, trauma... you name it. It's vast. It's all there. And it's presented in a neutral way - it doesn't judge. It's just a life lived, through the eyes of the person experiencing it. You get to feel about it however you want.

High points? First of all, this book is a monument to literary love – there are so many good literary works mentioned and appreciated, as well as loads of music references. Which ever incarnation of the main character we are following, he ends up with a certain love for literature, either a writer, a reporter, or just a reader, but an ardent one. The book also has great descriptions of feelings, reasons for having them, life questions, questions you have when growing up and going out into the world. The characters feel very lifelike, likeable, easy to get attached to. You will probably end up rooting for them – even when they mess their lives up quite irreparably. The most interesting part is that we get multiple different versions of the same people – just different enough to be interesting, yet similar enough to be likeable. Another great point is that this book offers a lot of background on the partial history of American in the 1960-70's, or in other words – it bares everything that's ugly about America in its recent history. There's Vietnam, the need and lack of feminism, student riots and shootings against the black people of Newark, and many other societal problems and changes of the middle of the 20th century in the US. As a person from Europe, I was extremely interested in reading about this in terms of how it affected people, rather than just dry historical facts.

And then there's also all the love for Horn&Hardart, that I found out about through this book.

Low points? The story is sometimes hard to follow because of the similarity of the stories – essentially, the book is made up of long chapters, each detailing a period in the boy's life. The problem is, you forget which is essentially which because it's always the same person, but 4 versions of them – all pages upon pages apart. That was a problem for me at the start, but in the end I figured it probably doesn't really matter to follow the story factually, as much as it would to just follow it emotionally. Another low point would be that I didn't quite get into the story at least until I read up to 20%, which, next to the bulk of 880 pages that this book is, is still a whopping 176. Most people will have dropped a book at this point if that's how long it takes them to get into it.

So, in short – you should read this book, if:

- You like slow and deep books
- You care about emotional development and inner drama more than outward action
- You have read big serious books and liked them
- You don't DNF if it's not immediately interesting within 20 pages
- You get attached to characters
- You love beautiful, almost poetic prose

I'd still very much like to read and review this book. However I'm slightly put off by the length of it :( Despite Paul Auster being a favourite author of mine, it feels like I need to carve out a huge chunk of time to devote to reading this book and I don't feel like I have that time right now. Soon though, I hope.

Young Archie Ferguson has his whole life ahead of him. Or, actually, three or four iterations of his life. A great book for anyone who's wondered what might have been.

I feel bad leaving a review that isn't filled with praise, however, despite the fact that the story is excellent, this book is just too long and too dense for my taste.

Too long.. I changed my mind about reading this novel once I realised it would be at the expense of other novels.

This is certainly a book that demands a fair amount of reading stamina – and much concentration – although in many ways it is a straightforward narrative, the coming-of-age story of Archie Ferguson, born in 1947, as we follow him from infancy to adulthood. Only there isn’t just one Archie Ferguson, there are four, all of whom live parallel lives. These four versions of a life are not always easy to keep track of as they are very similar and I wasn’t always sure which one I was reading about. I found it difficult at times to distinguish one from another. Yet I found the novel absorbing and immersive and in a way I didn’t care that I occasionally confused one Archie with another. These plural lives, over nearly 900 pages, give the reader a panoramic portrait of one young man’s life in America over the often tumultuous post-war years plus a panoramic picture of American society in the wider context, with the historical background always in evidence, and the rich and detailed narrative drew me in so that I just went with the flow. Having now finished it I can’t in all honesty remember what each individual Archie did but somehow it doesn’t seem to matter. A bildungsroman par excellence and a wonderfully compelling tale. Not without its faults, admittedly – it sometimes meanders a bit too much and gets bogged down in some of the historical events described – but overall a remarkable and unforgettable novel.