Sunset Park is a literary novel and one of the best among the other contemporary novels that I have read.

Miles Heller, the protagonist, has a job clearing out the thrash from Florida homes whose previous owners have left behind. He also has an underage Cuban girlfriend, Pilar, he lives with despite the blackmailing of the girl's older sister Angela. Miles has left his college education and comfortable life in his publishing-house-owner father's home in New York without letting anyone know of his whereabouts. He is punishing himself and "getting his act together" for a guilty feeling about his half-brother's death that took place in their teen years.

When he disregards one of Angela's wishes, he gets beaten up by the men she has sent. Afraid of going to jail for living with an underage girl, since Angela said she'd let the police know, he escapes to New York, and in a rough neighborhood in Brooklyn squats in an abandoned house. His housemates are a family friend Nathan Bing, Ellen Brice, Alice Bergstrom, and a lesser writer.

What Miles doesn't know and what the reader later finds out is that his family is aware of every step he takes, thanks to their mutual friend, Bing, who keeps in touch with both sides. Miles loves his father and even his stepmother but feels guilty toward them.

Will he be able to overcome his own shortcomings and his guilt to face them again and put his academic and emotional life in order is up to the reader to find out.

learning from Auster just by reading his book, as to how to construct a good plot and integrate strong and well-drawn characters into it.

Everything.

read every Auster novel.

Paul Benjamin Auster (1947-) is an American author known for works blending absurdism, existentialism, crime fiction and the search for identity and personal meaning.
His works are:
Novella: Travels in the Scriptorium
Memoir: The Invention of Solitude
Film: Smoke
Novels and short fiction: The New York Trilogy, Moon Palace, The Music of Chance, The Book of Illusions, The Brooklyn Follies, Blue in the Face

It is perfectly written. All characters are fully developed without taking away from the protagonist's story. The plot is impeccable hovering over a young man seeking identity and his redemption.
Although the loose ends are tied up satisfactorily, the uncertain ending comes from the main character's uncertainty about the status of his own identity.

This is a novel in the literary genre that puts its author in the same class as Faulkner, Hemingway, and the likes. Readers who are more into action and adventure and lighter plots may not appreciate it.

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Created Jun 02, 2011 at 10:44am • Submit your own review...