![]() ![]() This is an intriguing and novel device, but we have a problem: it’s not that Archie Ferguson isn’t a very interesting character it’s that he’s four not very interesting characters. ![]() Archie Ferguson gets himself born one day in 1947 and then, for reasons that become clear 800 pages later – by which point the knackered reader may not greatly care – his life splits into four narrative threads, as in some theoretical quantum-multiverse thing. But wait: there isn't just one hero there are four, except they're all the same hero – sort of. Paul Auster's first novel in seven years, 4 3 2 1, begins with just such a leisurely account of its hero's grandparents. The suspicion of authorial presumption is stronger when the book in question is a brick of a thing, harking back to the days when folks had little else to distract them, so one may as well kick off with 50 pages on the hero’s grandparents. ![]() Every book that gets written is an act of insolence, in that for the time it takes to read we are asked to neglect the storehouse of canonical masterpieces whose perusal would fill any human lifespan. ![]()
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