Sunset Park by Paul Auster, Faber Fiction, $32.99
I’ve been hooked on Paul Auster for more than 20 years now, since his first novel, the mysterious and haunting New York Trilogy. He writes with simple elegance about complex ideas though his favourite subject, the one he keeps returning to, is the role of chance in people’s lives. The moment when fate intervenes and changes everything.
His 13th novel opens on a scene of desolation in south Florida; 28-year old Miles Heller is sifting through the abandoned goods of families whose homes have been re-possessed by the banks. It’s called trashing out, the last of a long string of dead-end jobs Miles has pursued since abandoning his own home and family following a terrible, random act for which he cannot forgive himself. Though others will, if he gives them the chance.
A lot goes on in Sunset Park – the name of the squat where Miles takes refuge – but at core, it is the story of a broken family struggling to re-assemble itself, searching for the grace to accept what it cannot change.
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