Paul Auster - Winter Journal

Scotsman“Seems a very peculiar mishmash of notes towards possible writing...” Overall, there is a lingering feeling of bad faith about this endeavour. At times it reads as if Auster himself were not truly committed to the project, and, like some of the later novels, it ends up as yet more whistling in the dark...

The Independent“There are evocative moments of reflection...” The main trouble here is the absence of a narrative thread; the prevailing sense of a book assembled from scrawled titbits, fleeting thoughts and haphazard ramblings...

The Telegraph“Beginning to mark time towards his decline...” In his native land, Auster has been accused of self-mythologising. Unfortunately, there are too many passages in this meditation on ageing that divulge an embarrassing narcissism...

Washington Post“Contemplative, pugnacious and achingly tender...” This is, by story’s end, a profoundly beautiful book. We quickly forget the rigid, unfeeling chaos of its beginning, the memoirist’s awkward exhortations to “you"...

Guardian“Disappointing...it feels posthumous...” Winter Journal is a terrible book - the kind of self-indulgent, ill-conceived, and poorly-edited disaster that makes you doubt whether or not you could truly have liked the works that preceded it...

Publishers Weekly“Quietly moving meditation on death and life...” This is the exquisitely wrought catalogue of a man’s history through his body, a body that has felt pain and pleasure because “[the] body always knows what the mind doesn’t know”...