by Paul Auster
First published 2012
Paul Auster reaches his sixty-third winter and decides to chronicle the history of his physical self. He examines every sensation his body has experienced, from moments of pleasure to episodes of pain. The acclaimed novelist approaches this task as both observer and subject, mapping the terrain of flesh that has carried him through decades. He reflects on his mother's journey through life and death, weaving her story into his own corporeal narrative. Thirty years have passed since he explored fatherhood in The Invention of Solitude, and now he turns inward to examine the vessel that contains memory, experience, and time itself. Auster transforms the simple act of inhabiting a body into an investigation of what it means to exist in physical form, creating an intimate portrait of mortality and the accumulation of lived experience.
Genres: literary-fiction, autobiography, biography-memoir, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: introspective-narrative, personal-journey
230 pages · Hardcover · Henry Holt and Company